Coming Home
by Becky Tailweaver
Summary: (Sequel to "Stronger Than I Am" ) Conan's troubles are just beginning when his family starts disappearing. An old acquaintance is back in town, planning to bring everything to an end...
1. Prologue

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie! _

_**Author's Note:** Here you go, all--the long-awaited, much-anticipated sequel to **Stronger Than I Am**. Hope it doesn't disappoint too much. More to come soon; this one's gonna be a doozy, folks--strap in!_

**Coming Home  
**by Becky Tailweaver

_All those nights I've spent alone,  
Uninspired, so tired and wasted.  
There's lots of times I'd have telephoned;  
I couldn't find the words to say,_

_I'm coming home,  
Lord I'm coming home.  
I'll make it short,  
I'll make it sweet,  
Make it up to you and me.  
I'm not the same guy I used to be.  
What can I do to make you believe,_

_I'm coming home.  
Oh, I'm coming home.  
I'm coming home,  
Yeah I'm coming home.  
Only seems like yesterday,  
You and I were saying goodbye,  
Now I'm just a few miles away;  
Gonna see you tonight._

_I've been alone and I live the pain,  
Reach for you in desperation.  
I was wrong, I'll take the blame;  
I need you back now, I just can't wait._

_I'm coming home,  
Yeah, I'm coming home.  
Coming home,  
I'm just coming, coming,  
Waiting it out.  
I'm just coming home._

--Bryan Adams, "Coming Home"

..._and it begins_...


	2. Part 1: Another World Inside

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_There's another world inside of me  
That you may never see;  
There's secrets in this life  
That I can't hide.  
Somewhere in this darkness  
There's a light that I can't find.  
Maybe it's too far away.  
Maybe I'm just blind...  
_--3 Doors Down, "When I'm Gone"

**Part 1: Another World Inside**

Conan was visibly _storming_ as he headed to his first class of the day, scowling like an inclement thundercloud with a look of such piercing anger in his eyes that even his closest friends thought it best not to approach him until it passed. Even though he fully realized that the cracks in his mask were showing--though it began to matter less as "Conan" grew older--he couldn't bring himself to brighten up and concentrate on the tasks at hand. Not with what had happened when he'd dropped Yuuichi off at Teitan Elementary.

He and the boy had parted ways at the Elementary's front gate, as Conan sent his otouto-chan on his way to the preschool center on the ground floor. It had all been pleasant enough, Yuu-kun giving him a cheerful hug goodbye and dashing off to join the other children--until Conan spotted Jodie Stantemillion standing near the main doors, gazing at him from across the yard.

No, not at _him_--she'd been watching the small, dark-haired little preschooler bobbing along amongst the herds of other youngsters on their way to class. The blond woman's gaze had been intent and calculating, her smile warm but..._chilling_.

Conan had done nothing but frown when Jodie-sensei's eyes flicked up to him, dark with secrets and knowledge--but inside, Shinichi boiled and raged and seethed like a caged animal, fighting down an urge to rush in, grab Yuuichi, and get him out of there before she _did_ something.

It had taken every ounce of self-control he posessed to turn on his heel and walk away without looking back.

And now he had to sit here in a mind-numbingly _dull_ junior high classroom and listen to a teacher drone on lessons he'd had _years_ ago and had aced easily--while somewhere, less than a block away in the Elementary building, _that woman_ was in close proximity to his son and could do _anything_, at any time.

It took all he had _now_ just to sit still with Conan's usual air of half-listening boredom, taking vague notes that were pretty much worthless in light of his memory, just to look somewhat studious.

Yoshida Ayumi, ever the observant one--and since she was sitting right beside him, his ill humor was hard to miss--had obviously noticed his funk and looked as though she itched to ask, or at least attempt to console him. But Conan-kun had long since made clear his stance on passing frivolous notes in class, or whispering during lectures; she was effectively cut off from him until the teacher was finished, or the class got out.

Besides, what could she do? What sort of comfort could she offer him?

Ayumi--like Genta and Mitsuhiko and even the other friends he'd made in his time here--knew absolutely _nothing_. She didn't know that he wasn't the junior high student he pretended to be--though she recognized how mature and intelligent he was, especially since she was growing up a bit herself--and she didn't know what his real name or age was. She didn't know that his life was in danger from a secretive crime syndicate; she didn't know that he had to live day in and day out in constant fear, pain, and loneliness. She didn't know that Mouri Yuuichi was really his son.

No one did.

No one that _mattered_--but the one who could destroy _everything_. That woman--the one who called herself Jodie Stantemillion, who passed herself off as a kindergarten teacher. A _kindergarten teacher_--her!

He caught himself scribbling a hangman's noose on the margin of his note paper and glared briefly at the offending image, scratching the sketch out with a barely-visible grimace. _Damn her_...

"Jodie-sensei" was lying to the world. And, it seemed, he was the only one who knew.

He didn't know when it had happened. He had a vague timetable at best; sometime between Ran's shaky high school graduation--and things had been so hectic and emotional back then that he hadn't _paid attention_ like he should have--and Yuuichi's advent into preschool, someone had taken over Jodie Stantemillion's life. _Someone_, he had very little trouble guessing, who was involved with the Black Organization. He didn't know what had happened to the original Jodie-sensei, the one Ran knew--dead, gone back to America, or imprisoned; he had no way of finding out--but this new one had, he'd heard, eventually transferred herself out of her position as a high school English teacher.

And he had not even known until he'd seen her at the beginning of this school year--the year he had been transferred to the Junior High with the rest of the twelve-year-olds. The year he had left, _she_ had gone to Teitan Elementary--where Yuuichi was participating innocently in class right now.

The thought made his blood _boil_. Hattori had once chided him for his _over_protectiveness, such that he wound himself into a tight ball of temper and nerves whenever things got risky--becoming a human time-bomb waiting to explode at the slightest jostle--but in light of the way things were, Conan didn't _care_ if he was being hypervigilant. He had no reason _not_ to be, when _They_ were an inch away and a step behind at any given moment.

Every day he had to send Yuuichi off to school with _her_ cranked his springs even tighter. One more day, one more twist of the screw, yet he could do nothing to stop what might be coming. Something was going to _happen_, and _she_ would be in the middle of it--he knew that. There could be no other reason she was there, waiting; waiting for him, waiting for Yuuichi--to use the child as a hostage, or to steal him away forever, or to _kill_ him...

Conan's pencil tip _snapped_ loudly, getting a glance from a concerned Ayumi but little attention from anyone else--after all, pencils broke all the time. Conan glared at his pencil for a second, scowling at the broken piece of graphite and the harsh letters of the "notes" he'd been taking. They were hard and dark, livid, like slashes from a knife.

At his side, Ayumi swallowed hard, silent and almost _scared_ of the boy sitting next to her for a second; there was something awful and black in his eyes--something that made it seem like he wasn't their Conan-kun any more, but someone else. She recognized this, though; sometimes it happened--it just _happened_, sometimes for no reason at all, or sometimes when there was _danger_, especially when Yuu-chan was with them--and she didn't like it at all when Conan-kun got like this...

But then Conan shifted around to get a fresh pencil from his pencil case, and when he looked up again it was all _gone_--he was just the normal, sleepy-eyed, bored-in-class Conan-kun like always. He turned to a fresh notebook page and wrote down notes, his handwriting the same old lazy, precise letters that only Conan-kun was so good at.

Sometimes _this_ scared her more than the burning in his eyes when he got..._strange_ like that. When he would be all black inside for a few instants, and she could _see_ it--but then it would all just _disappear_ and leave her half-wondering if she'd seen it at all.

It was like he was wearing a mask, and sometimes it would _slip_--like the way his glasses sometimes slipped down his nose, and with a single finger he could push them back again. And just like his glasses, he would push the mask back up again, just like that, so nobody could really see what was underneath.

Sometimes Ayumi wanted badly to ask him. Just to ask him what was under his mask--what was so dark and hurting that he had to cover it up like that, all the time. But she was _afraid_ to ask, because what was underneath was so scary--and she was afraid that if she asked him, he would tell her.

She was afraid of his answer. Because it might mean that he really _wasn't_ the Conan-kun they all thought they knew, and they would lose him forever.

* * *

It wasn't that Mouri Yuuichi _meant_ to be inattentive in class. Really, he knew how important it was to be quiet, sit still, and above all listen to the teacher. He didn't _mean_ to be distracted by the book Conan-niichan had lent him when Sensei read them stories, or to occasionally daydream while the rest of the class recited alphabets or poems.

It was just so hard to pay attention in preschool when he already _knew_ most of it. Niichan had taught him to read really well, and he even knew how to put numbers together a little. Art was fun, but the teachers always made such a big deal when he painted pictures of things that looked _real_, instead of the smudgy blotches and streaks the other kids made. The other children always had such fun making messy paper bag puppets or glitter-swathed bean rattles, or other silly preschool projects; he always finished his quickly and neatly with time to spare, leaving him with nothing to do while the other kids figured out how to glue two paper plates together.

He didn't mean to be like this. He wanted to be a good boy and participate in class like Kaachan and Niichan wanted him to. He really _tried_. But preschool was just so _boring_ a lot of the time.

It wasn't much of a surprise that Snack and Recess were two of his favorite "class periods."

At least he _played_ a lot like the other kids did. As Sensei told them to put their snack-time trash in the wastebasket and file outside for the recess break, Yuuichi looked forward to fifteen minutes of free time before he'd have to come back inside and they'd have boring old story time. As soon as their teacher gave them the okay, the entire herd of three and four-year-olds cut loose for the school playground, jockeying for who would be first on the slide.

Yuuichi played _like_ the other kids, but still not the same. Most of the others shied away from playing with him; he was different from them, and even if they were young and silly and naive they could still sense it somehow. Yuuichi liked to play soccer or tag or obstacle-races, games that had _rules_ and _goals_ and other things just a little too complex for their young minds. What _they_ wanted to play involved little more than finding out who was heavier than who on the seesaw, or discovering how many ways there were to go down a slide.

Yuuichi thought there were three at most; frontwards, backwards, and upside-down. And the upside-down one hurt.

So, like most other days, Yuuichi played by himself. He could sometimes beg a soccer ball out of the gym from one of the recess aides, if they were one of the teachers that knew him and if they were feeling generous. Other times he would have to content himself with climbing up to the top of the jungle gym--often alarming Sensei, who didn't think little boys his age should go that high. Sometimes the swings were relatively unoccupied, and he could pass the time almost-flying, seeing how far into the sky he could put his toes.

Today, none of the teachers would get him a ball and the swings were too busy, so he wandered off on his own, toward the grassier part of the playground near the back wall. It was much quieter there; he could hear the birds and the cicadas over the more-distant shrieks and laughter from his classmates.

There was an ant-hill near the wall behind one of the cherry trees, and he lingered for a moment there, squatting to observe the scurrying little black workers. They were always very interesting, always doing things--carrying bits of food, dead bugs, pieces of leaves and dirt, going about looking for things to eat and lugging them back home with them.

There were many different kinds of ants, he knew, even in one nest; they all had jobs, just like a tiny little city. Niichan even told him that the ants had a queen, somewhere down there.

A few meters from the ant-hill, he spotted a large, shiny insect that rather caught his eye. It was nearly the size of his thumb, with a brilliant irridescent carapace, but he couldn't tell what kind of bug it was. It looked like some sort of beetle; it was certainly large enough and had very long feelers. Niichan would know what it was--Niichan knew _everything_.

Maybe he could catch it, and take it home for Niichan to look at...

"Mouri Yuuichi-kun?"

Yuuichi looked up from his intent study of the beetle-bug in question, glancing around for the source of the voice that had called him. He was a bit startled when he noticed the speaker; standing behind him was an older girl with long blond hair and very grownup-lookng clothes, looking down at him with a small, strange smile on her face that made him frown at her.

"How'd you know my name?" he asked, standing up to face her, careful not to step on his beetle. "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers. You're not from this school--you're supposed to be at the Junior High."

"My, such a shrewd little fellow," the girl murmured, her smile quirking up at one corner. "Actually, I know a lot of things about you, Yuuichi-kun. My name is Haibara Ai, and I used to be very good friends with Edogawa-kun."

"Niichan's friend?" Now Yuuichi was puzzled. After all, _friends_ were different from _strangers_--even friends of friends. But he'd never met this person before, and she wasn't Ayumi-neechan either. "How come you used to be?"

"I had to go away a long time ago," Ai explained softly, her eyes softening as his frown began to fade into cautious curiosity and thoughtfulness--an expression she knew all too well, set on a small face that so resembled... "You look just like your father," she caught herself whispering.

That made Yuuichi's brows pop up. "You know Touchan too?"

She smiled ruefully at her own slip. "Yes, I do. I know a great deal about your whole family, Yuuichi-kun." _Much more than you, I daresay._

"You know Kaachan?"

"Yes, I've met your mother." _And I'm sorry I don't have time to do this gently..._ "Yuuichi-kun, I need you to come with me."

Instant balk. The toddler took a step back, all the wariness returning. "Go with you? Away from school?"

"It's very important, Yuuichi-kun," Ai persisted, taking a step so that he wouldn't get too far from her--and she didn't have time to waste; if someone spotted her or she took too long... "I need your help."

"I-I don't _know_ you." Yuuichi was shaking his head vehemently. "School's not over yet. Kaachan didn't say I could!"

"We can't wait until school's over," Ai told him, frowning. "I need you to understand, Yuuichi-kun--something's going to happen very soon, and it will be very bad unless you come with me. If you wait until the end of school, someone may come to kidnap you. Do you know what that means?"

Looking frightened--but amazingly, still not panicking or crying--Yuuichi nodded. "Take me away from Kaachan...somewhere I don't wanna go. Haibara-san...are _you_ gonna kidnap me?"

"No." _So **please** don't force me to. Come on, **Kudo** Yuuichi, if you've got any of Shinichi in you besides just your looks...please understand this--I **know** you can. You've got to come with me before--!_ "Listen carefully to me, Yuuichi-kun," she began, fixing the child's gaze with her own. "This is very important. Your father is in very great danger--" Yuuichi gasped softly. "--and we need your help to save him. If you don't come with us, something could happen to you, and then we won't be able to help your father or save your family and friends from some very bad people."

"Touchan's in trouble...?" The toddler took a shaky breath, brows low and worried over eyes that were just as intelligent--despite their youth and innocence--as his father's. "What bad guys? Like the bad men Niichan and Jiichan catch for Inspector Megure?"

"Even worse." _One more step, one more second...**please**, Yuuichi..._ Ai measured the distance between herself and the boy, should she have to make the decision for him. "Yuuichi-kun, take my hand and come with me. Please?"

Yuuichi looked up at her, his blue gaze strangely piercing--thoughtful and measuring--and locked her eyes with his own, all but freezing her in her tracks. "I wanna help Touchan, so I'll go with you," he decided at length, stepping forward to take her half-raised hand. He only glanced back once, at the shiny beetle that was skittering away into the grass.

Ai's smile was truly genuine this time. "Thank you, Yuuichi-kun," she said honestly, gently leading him toward the back gate--toward the car that waited at the curb, its engine already running. Yuuichi hesitated once, glancing back at the schoolyard, before climbing inside the rear door she opened for him.

"Kaachan's gonna be mad," he informed her almost apologetically before she shut the door.

"I think she'll understand, just this once," Ai chuckled, as she helped him strap in and climbed into her own seat beside him.

In the front, the driver of the car--a cold-faced man with dark hair--took off his sunglasses to regard the little boy. Yuuichi looked back at him with large eyes, wary but unafraid.

"So here he is at last," the man said quietly, one brow raising just a bit.

"Yes," Ai replied, folding her hands in her lap as she glanced at the child beside her.

"I still say he's awfully small."

"All our hopes rest on him," Ai said, her tone touched with irony that Yuuichi did not understand. "I realize this is a lot to ask of one little boy; if I could wait longer, I would--but none of us has any time left." She smiled at the boy beside her. "Yuuichi-kun, this is my friend, Akai Shuichi."

The man in front snorted faintly, making Ai look up at him again.

"Let's go--we need to hurry," she stated.

"Right."

Within moments, the car pulled away from the school, accelerating around the corner and disappearing amidst the light midday traffic.

_...to be continued..._


	3. Part 2: Locked In This Shell

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_I don't know how to live through this hell.  
Woken up, I'm still locked in this shell.  
Frozen soul, frozen down to the core;  
Break the ice, I can't take any more.  
_--Metallica, "Trapped Under Ice"

**Part 2: Locked In This Shell**

"Excuse me--Edogawa Conan?"

Conan paused to blink at the student aide who had called his name; the entire class went quiet, alternately watching him and the nondescript girl who was standing in the classroom door. "Um, yeah?" he replied.

"I'm to tell you to please report to the office," the girl informed him politely. "You have a message from your guardian."

Then she was gone, bowing to the teacher and exiting the classroom, headed back to her duties.

"Edogawa-kun, you may be excused to the office," the teacher told him distractedly, far too involved in getting the class ready to begin. Most of the teachers here trusted him, though; he was well-known for being a quiet, responsible student.

And so, quietly and responsibly, he scooped up his bookbag and hustled out of the classroom, headed for the office.

However, he had to wonder what sort of message from his guardian--Ran? Or one of the Mouris?--needed to pull him out of class right at the beginning of fourth period, before he'd even had a chance to get out his texbook. His heartbeat kicked up a notch as he considered the possibilities--something important, some kind of emergency...?

"Excuse me," he announced himself courteously as he entered the Junior High's main office. "I'm Edogawa Conan--was there a message for me?"

One of the secretaries looked up at him with a smile. "Oh, there you are! Yes, we received a call from your guardian, Mouri Ran. She'd like you to go see her at the Elementary building's office as soon as possible--the message is urgent; apparently her son..."

Conan was out the door and running down the hall with only a rapid "I'mleavingthankyou!" to mark his exit. The secretary shook her head in faint exasperation and made a note that Edogawa Conan was going to be excused from class.

_Yuuichi--Yuuichi--something happened to Yuuichi--!_ Conan's mind beat a rhythm as he pelted down the steps and sprinted in the direction of the Elementary. It wasn't all that far, but it seemed like hours before he was skidding into the hallway, around the corner to the old familiar Elementary office, all but tearing open the door to call out for Ran and Yuuichi.

"Ran-neechan! Ran-neechan! I'm here, where's--?"

Purse clenched in her hands, Ran stood up suddenly from the chairs in the waiting area, the Elementary vice-principal beside her. "Conan-kun!" she gasped, relief in her eyes at the sight of him but her face still pale and worried. "I called because I thought there might be a chance Yuu-chan was with you--but you didn't come over to bring him back, so I guess he didn't come find you again..." She trailed off, hopes dimming when her son did not appear at his Niichan's side.

Conan swallowed hard, his bookbag falling to the floor beside him. "Where's Yuuichi?"

"That's what we're trying to determine, young man," the vice-principal said, rather sternly. "I know the boy has a habit of wandering off to the Junior High to visit with you--_not_ a practice that should be encouraged, mind you--but you've been fairly responsible about bringing him back here as soon as you find him. However, in this instance..."

"I haven't seen him since I dropped him here this morning," Conan said, more to Ran than to the vice-principal, getting a miffed look from the older man. "What happened?"

Ran's breath hitched, almost a sob. She was deathly pale, her knuckles white as her hands clenched her purse. "I don't know, Conan-kun. I got a call from the secretary saying that Yuu-chan didn't come in from recess, and the teacher was a little worried but thought he might have snuck off to see you again...I came here but when they called the Junior High nobody there had seen him, but they were going to call you..."

Icy fingers were already squeezing at Conan's heart, making his breaths come in slow, harsh gasps. He had seen it this morning--seen the predatory look in that false Jodie-sensei's eyes. He'd known even then--every single instinct in him had been _screaming_...

_Oh God...**no**..._

"Go home," he told Ran, his voice low and calm despite the roaring in his ears, the haze that clouded his vision. "Tell your parents what happened. Call Inspector Megure. I'll find Yuuichi."

"But...Conan-kun...!" Ran looked shocked at the cold, commanding air that had suddenly come about the boy.

"Young man, that's entirely--!"

"Hurry!" he snapped, cutting off the increasingly-irate vice-principal with his sharp order, already halfway out the office door. "Please. Trust me, Ran--just do it!"

He was sprinting off again before she could reply. She stood still and quiet as the vice-principal fumed for several moments about ill-mannered young hooligans who lured children out of preschool and talked back to their elders. She ignored him, however; that _change_ had come over Conan again--the change that happened when there was a murder afoot, when danger threatened, when he became less and less like the boy she knew and more like the ghost of a man she wished she could touch...

"I beg your pardon, Kyoutou-san..." Ran said softly, as the man's mutterings wound down. "I think...I'll go home and call the police, just to be sure..."

* * *

Conan pounded down the quiet hallway, teeth gritted in a grimace that belonged on a much older face. As he passed each classroom, he glanced within, through an open door or a window in a door--searching for one particular, all-too-familiar face.

She was here. He knew it. She had to be here--the kindergarten was in this wing, and class was still in session. She would have to be here--there was nowhere for her to run.

If she wasn't here...

**_There!_**

He spotted her distinctive blond hair through a slightly-ajar classroom door, braking to a hard stop right there in the hall. Without a thought, he nearly _flung_ the door open, startling the young children in the midst of class within.

They seemed to be in the middle of some kind of free art period; a couple dozen small, curious faces turned to look at him in confusion, as the teacher of the class stood up from her place near one child's desk. Her eyes were hard in her kindly smiling face, never wavering.

"Stantemillion-sensei," he bit out, painfully formal, barely keeping his voice civil and vaguely sounding like it should. "I need to speak to you for a moment. If you would."

A faint tightening around the woman's eyes was the only change in her smiling visage. "Of course. Class--just keep on working," she told her students brightly, "and I'll be back in just a second!"

Not questioning the teacher--or the presence of a strange older boy in their doorway--the children shrugged as one and went back to their projects, the usual free-period din resuming. Jodie-sensei wove between the small desks and stepped out the door, sliding it shut behind her. She faced Conan, who had moved back as she emerged to give her a wide berth. He stood in the middle of the hall, glaring at her, hands fisted at his sides and his eyes glittering almost feverishly behind the glass lenses.

"Can I help you, Edogawa-kun?" she asked politely, as if nothing was wrong.

Her unconcerned attitude made something flame hotly inside him. "Where's Yuuichi?" he demanded flatly, trembling where he stood--locked in a strange mixture of terror and rage that would let him neither advance nor flee.

"Why--has he gone missing?" she inquired, her eyebrows raising in "concern."

"He disappeared from recess today," Conan stated, eyes narrowed and cold. "Ran's frantic. Where is he? Don't pretend you don't know!"

Jodie-sensei's expression..._softened_ somewhat at the mention of Ran. "Poor Angel..." she murmured, so quietly he almost didn't catch it. When she spoke again, her voice had _changed_--sharpening, no longer polite and concerned but colder and almost...amused. "So, Cool Guy...I take it you're through playing games."

When Jodie changed, so did _he_--the last vestiges of _Conan_ fell away, everything but the ever-present glasses. "_Where is he?_"

"Now, now...a nice young man like you shouldn't be so impolite to a teacher," Jodie scolded, shaking a finger at him.

"You're no _teacher_," Conan spat viciously, his whole body tensed like a bow about to spring. "Where's Yuuichi? What have you done with--"

"--your son?" Jodie broke in suddenly, her voice strident enough that, though he was angered, Conan flinched at the volume of it. "That's it, isn't it? Right, _Conan-kun?_"

Conan's jaw tightened. "Don't."

"Don't what? We both know we aren't what we pretend to be." She smiled, mocking. "If anyone were to _overhear_ that I'm not quite certified to be teaching...well, that would be just as unfortunate as if, say, someone _overheard_ that Yuuichi-kun is your son. The Angel would get in a lot of trouble if a blood test matched Yuuichi-kun's DNA with yours..._Conan-kun_."

His grimace was almost a tooth-baring snarl. "_Don't_."

Jodie's face turned hard and cold, the mocking vanishing like a mist. "Don't presume to come here and give me orders. I can make your happy little secret life disappear in an _instant_."

"**_Don't_**." There was a sudden snap in Conan's eyes that made even Jodie hesitate. His icy blue gaze pinned hers with the intensity of an eagle's, and fire burned within--a barely-restrained rage that was only enhanced by the fear and panic that raced through him. "_Where...is...Yuuichi?_" he all but growled, his voice sounding nothing like a twelve-year-old boy for an instant.

Jodie matched gazes with him for long moments, watching him struggle with himself, watching the crackling of terror and anger turn his young face from innocent child to all-too-dangerous man. It made her shiver inside.

With the little one missing, he no longer cared to keep silent, to continue this high-wire dance of lies--the mask of the young boy was worthless to him now. He dared enough to come directly to her, to confront her and demand this of her--he knew she knew, and she knew _he_ knew, but until now they had acted the part of teacher and student. He had never given her reason to act; not yet, not with Sherry's whereabouts still vague, not when action would require that she lose the Angel and her baby...

But when that same Angel Baby was put in danger, the Cool Guy was willing to go to Hell and back. Through _her_ if necessary.

Finally, she smiled--a light, wry smile, appreciative and ironic. "I have no idea where he is."

His glare faltered. "_What?_"

"That's the truth, Cool Guy," she replied. "I don't know where he is. I admit I'd like to be the one behind his disappearance--" At this, Conan nearly snarled at her again, but she continued. "--but as luck would have it, neither I nor my associates have anything to do with it. This time."

His eyes narrowed. "How do I know that's the truth?"

"Would I stand here tap-dancing with you if I had your son in my hands?"

"You can still kill us anyway, so that doesn't make any difference," he retorted. "You said so yourself. What's holding you back?"

"You have my word, Cool Guy." She pinned his gaze with her own. "On your sweet Angel's life. I don't have him."

He glared at her, eyes sharp with anger and hatred.

"I suggest you track him down quickly," Jodie went on, her voice gone quiet and cold once again. "I know he's out of your hands now. I won't hesitate."

Conan's hands fisted. "If you hurt him...you...you--if you even _touch_ him..."

"Whoever finds Yuuichi-kun first..." Jodie let her sentence hang in the air.

The young boy who was not a young boy glared death at her for a few instants more. Then, with a noise that might have been a snarl of frustration, he whirled on his heel and took off, running for the hall exit.

Jodie watched him go, a faint smile flickering on her lips. "Good luck, Cool Guy."

A small, tousled head poked out the classroom door behind her. "Jodie-sensei? Mosuke-kun won't share the gold glitter!"

By the time she turned around, her face was once again that of the warm, friendly Jodie Stantemillion that all the children knew and loved. She turned, taking the child by the hand and leading him back into the busy classroom.

"There now, Akira-kun, let's go talk to Mosuke-kun..."

_to be continued_


	4. Part 3: Somewhere New

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_Isn't anyone trying to find me?  
Won't somebody come take me home?  
It's a damn cold night,  
Trying to figure out this life.  
Won't you take me by the hand?  
Take me somewhere new;  
I don't know who you are, but I--  
I'm with you.  
I'm with you.  
_--Avril Lavigne, "I'm With You"

**Part 3: Somewhere New**

The place they drove to was in a part of the city Yuuichi didn't recognize at all. They went past streets and stores and eventually industrial businesses and storage lots--places he didn't know, not even from times he'd gone with Jiichan on his jobs. It worried Yuuichi to be in such unfamiliar territory--but not too much. He knew that if he had to run away and get home, he could find a police box. Or he could look at a map, or find a bus stop or a train station.

Niichan had taught him that, in case he ever got lost and couldn't find a police box. He could read street signs, and he could read maps, and if he could find the street he was on and then find Beika, he knew he could even _walk_ home if he had to.

The only pity was that his three-year-old mind, intelligent as it was, did not realize that walking home from the other side of the city would be very different from walking home from Beika Park.

The car pulled through an open chain-link gate, into a seemingly-endless maze amidst many warehouse-like buildings. After winding about between the structures until Yuuichi was certain they were indeed lost, the car finally stopped in front of a small office building attached to one of the warehouses.

It was only a couple stories tall, dwarfed by the large warehouse beside it, and the windows were all boarded up. As the driver stopped the car and the occupants began to disembark, Yuuichi stayed close to Haibara Ai's side and stared about at his surroundings. Even with the bright noon sun, the empty warehouse lot seemed haunting and lonely.

He started to realize how far from home he was. He started to wonder if he _could_ get home from here, if he had to run away.

He started to wonder if Kaachan would be able to find him.

"It's okay," Ai told him, taking his hand and leading him along after Akai. "You'll be safe here, Yuuichi-kun. Safer than anywhere else right now."

"Home's safe," Yuuichi replied in a small voice.

"Not right now," Ai stated. Then she spoke again, half to herself. "That's the first place they'll look..."

Akai-san unlocked the front door of the office building, letting them inside. He lingered to close and lock it again behind them as they stepped in.

The inside looked a lot more _alive_ than the outside. Yuuichi looked around, and could tell that there were people here. More than just Haibara-san and her driver-man Akai, too. There wasn't much dust around the empty space of the first floor, hanging in the air around the blank cubicle frames. There were many faint footprints on the concrete floor, lots of different shoes. And there were trash bags sitting near the door filled with wadded-up napkins and various kinds of takeout meals--not rotten yet. Less than a few days old.

So when Ai led him up the stairs at the back of the offices, Yuuichi was not surprised when he heard many people's voices. As they came around the stairwell corner, Yuuichi realized that this was where Haibara-san and her friends were staying.

Here in the upstairs, the lights were on, making it bright even with the windows all closed off. There were a lot of people, at least a dozen, arrayed about the tables, chairs, and even the cots set up in one corner. Most of them looked up when the trio entered the room, calling out greetings as Ai led Yuuichi over to the central work area.

There was a lot of stuff jammed into the main room of this little office building's second floor. The tables were the collapsible sort and looked to have been brought in by these people; a couple of them set up nearer to the far wall were jammed with all the trappings of the complex computer being operated by a young man with every-which-way hair.

Another table was stacked with high-tech equipment and recording devices, where an older man with headphones turned dials and flipped switches and took notes on whatever he was hearing. The remaining tables were covered with either papers and files or with more takeout litter similar to what was in the trash bags downstairs.

The men who worked here wore very strange clothing; some of them even in long-sleeved shirts and many-pocketed vests and oddly-baggy pants that reminded him of things he'd seen in movies. They all stood to meet Ai, except for the two busy with the computer and the headphones, and clustered up to stand almost in salute.

Amidst their rather noisy greetings, Ai raised a hand for silence--and to Yuuichi's surprise, all these grown men grew very quiet to listen to the young girl.

"Gentlemen, phase one of our rather hurriedly-constructed plan was successful," she announced evenly into the silence. "The target is in our custody, and we can now proceed to phase two."

The men started to murmur again, their eyes turning down to Yuuichi standing at Ai's side. One of them actually leaned down to peer at the boy, almost incredulous.

"He's even tinier in person," the man commented, scratching his head.

Ai smiled wryly. "His size is hardly relevant, Tsuji-kun."

"Haibara-kun," called the older man with the headphones, his hair peppered with gray and his moustache thick and bushy in a way that reminded Yuuichi of Inspector Megure. "I've got things to report."

"Back to your duties," Ai told the gathered men. "We'll be taking action soon."

Once more, Yuuichi was led by the hand, this time to the headphone-man's desk. Akai still followed them, still not saying anything at all.

"What do you have for me, Yakamoto-san?" Ai asked, coming to the side of the table.

"Pretty much what we expected," Yakamoto replied. "The schools hollered back and forth to each other, then called the Agency and now the Agency's phone has contacted the Tokyo Police."

Ai nodded. "A bit quicker than I thought, but no surprise. Edogawa-kun must've hustled Mouri-chan along a little."

"Iori-kun is keeping an eye on Mouri-san, says she went home and hasn't moved yet," Yakamoto went on, looking a bit irked. "But I've had two calls from Ken-kun saying he lost Edogawa at a major pedestrian crossing and can't pick him up again. Swears he just vanished. Little bugger must've ditched Ken and gone underground..."

"Ken obviously let his target's appearance deceive him. But Edogawa-kun's on alert now," Ai explained quietly. "And he can't tell our men from theirs. Ken won't find him again, I can guarantee it. In fact, tell him to come back and set up with our perimeter. There's a chance we might have been tracked, and until I get Yuuichi-kun to my lab and take care of things, we can't move."

"Right."

"In fact," Ai went on, glancing back at some of the others. "Tsuji--take two with you and join Tetsuya on the perimeter also. Nothing gets in until we go."

"Hai!" the man responded smartly, turning to do as he was bid.

Wide-eyed, Yuuichi watched and listened, beginning to comprehend. It seemed like these men were almost soldiers, even though they didn't wear true uniforms. They were here in secret, and they had something to do with his Niichan...

Curious, he leaned around Ai to look at the monitor in front of Yakamoto-san. "Hey, that's my address!" he piped suddenly, indignantly, startling Yakamoto, and Akai. "How come it says you listened to six calls at my house today? You're not supposed to listen to other people's telephones!"

Yakamoto blinked, his moustache twitching in surprise. "Shit--he can read? He can't be old enough to read..."

"I can too read!" Yuuichi protested, brows furrowing. "I _know_ what it says!"

"And he understands what he sees on the screen," Akai commented quietly, regarding the child with unreadable dark eyes. "Enough to know that we're tapping the Agency's phones..."

Ai only smiled faintly, unsurprised. "He is his father's son," she said simply, by way of explanation. "And for his father's sake, I've got to get him to my lab and start working. Akai--can you run things out here?"

"No problem."

"Good. Yuuichi-kun? Come along..." She led the wide-eyed three-year-old away toward the door to the back, as all the men watched them go, murmuring softly with incredulous gazes.

* * *

He'd known he was being followed the moment he set foot outside the school grounds. He'd felt the man's eyes on him like a tangible sensation--just like he always knew when someone dangerous was watching him. And it hadn't taken him long to spot his shadow--a man wearing a dark jacket and sunglasses in this pleasant weather rather stood out, and Edogawa Conan was not the naive young boy he appeared to be.

It had taken him less than half an hour to ditch the man at a busy crosswalk intersection. Once he was clear, and certain he had no other stragglers, he began to search for Yuuichi.

If that woman--that fake Jodie-sensei...if _she_ didn't have him, where could he be?

_He's too smart to just wander off chasing butterflies,_ Conan thought to himself, trying to be logical as he hurried from street to street, heading toward the arcade--a place he knew that Yuuichi knew he and Genta-tachi went often. _He knows better than to leave the school grounds without me or Ran...unless...one of the older kids talked him into something? Or...he thought he had to do something important...he can be **stubborn** like that..._

The clerk at the arcade's front desk had not seen any small blue-eyed preschoolers today, and a quick perusal revealed that Yuuichi had not slipped by under her radar. Checking the arcade off his list, Conan lit out for the next location on his zig-zag path toward the Mouri Detective Agency--the ice cream parlor.

_He knows not to go with strangers...not willingly anyway..._ The thought of Yuuichi being taken _unwillingly_ made his heart pound even harder. Already overwrought from his running, the fear-induced tightness in his chest was almost painful, stealing his breath away.

Yuuichi was not at the ice cream parlor. And no one there had seen him, either. His next destination was Beika Park, but the idea that the boy had been kidnapped began to seem more and more like a reality. _It couldn't happen to Yuuichi--it **couldn't**...he's too smart to let it happen... _

_I know better than that...shit, how many missing children do they post on the six o'clock news? And how many of them turn up later **dead**...?_

Sometimes his accurate memory and vivid mind worked against him. He'd seen far too many crime scenes in his lifetime--_both_ lifetimes--involving bodies discovered somewhere, dumped by their killers. And some of them had been children.

The images that flashed through his mind--those of a ragged, forlorn little body lying somewhere all pale and lifeless, empty blue eyes staring dully at the sky--only made his chest tighten even more, until he could hardly breathe at all.

_No...**no**...I **have** to find him...I can't lose him, God, I just can't lose him..._

Gritting his teeth in an attempt to bite back the panic, Conan ran faster.

* * *

Ran was wringing her hands, pacing up and down across her father's office, completely unable to sit still for even a moment. Her fear for Yuuichi's sake--and for Conan-kun, who had still not returned--kept her in nervous motion, like a worried mother bird.

Her father had left shortly before the call came in from the school, and she hadn't any way of contacting him until he came back from whatever top-secret birthday preparations he and her mother had arranged. His absence was like one more piece of her foundation crumbled away.

At Kogoro's desk, Inspector Megure and Officer Takagi used the Agency telephone to contact their headquarters to give a report. Their squadcar was parked out front, with the radio in it, but they didn't need to bother with it when Megure knew the back-line number to the station.

"...yes...yes, missing child," Megure spoke into the phone, his voice terse but unhurried. "That's right, I'm with the mother now. ... Mouri Ran...the missing child is Mouri Yuuichi...small boy, three years old, dark hair, blue eyes--can't miss 'em--and wearing a light T-shirt, denim overalls, and red tennis shoes. ... Yes, well, I'm not sure there's any foul play, not yet--he does wander off from time to time, according to Ran-kun...but all the same, best to err on the side of caution. ... Yes. Yes...thank you. Megure out."

When the phone was hung up, Ran nearly leaped to Megure's side. "Inspector?"

"I've let them know about the situation," Megure told her, his lack of alarm helping a great deal. "And they'll send out a bulletin so our boys will know to keep an eye out for him. Hopefully, this is just Yuuichi-kun wandering off by himself again, and he'll either end up back home or we'll find him again quickly."

"I hope so..." Ran's knuckles were white, so tight she clenched her hands. "And Conan-kun's still out looking for him..."

Takagi smiled, stepping up to touch Ran comfortingly on the shoulder. "With that little tantei on the job, it's as good as done," he said reassuringly. "Conan-kun's a good kid--I wouldn't worry about him at all."

Ran managed a faint smile, grateful. "Thank you, Takagi-keiji...I really appreciate you both coming out here on what might just be a false alarm."

"If a child is missing, it's never a false alarm," Megure told her, patting her on her other arm. "Now...I think Takagi-kun and I will go patrol around Beika a bit, see if we can't spot Yuuichi-kun trying to make his way home and got lost. Call HQ if anything happens here, and they'll contact us right away."

"Alright." Ran nodded quickly, glad to have a way to get ahold of the Inspector. "Thank you so much...and good luck."

She saw both of them out, and stood at the bottom of the stairs to watch the squadcar pull away, disappearing down the street. She stayed there for long moments, looking up and down the sidewalk, praying desperately in her heart that she would see her son's dark-haired little head bobbing through the pedestrian traffic, rushing in her direction.

"Yuuichi..." she whispered, throat tight with worry.

"Ran-neechan...!" A breathless, familiar voice called her name, startling her around.

"Conan-kun!" She stared at the panting, disheveled boy, who had screeched to a halt a couple meters from her and was leaning against the Agency wall, winded. "Oh--Conan-kun, are you alright?"

"Fine..." he gasped, waving her concerned hands away. "You call Megure?"

She nodded. "They just left--they went out to look for him..."

"I couldn't find him..." The boy gritted his teeth. "I went all over Beika...but I couldn't find him _anywhere_..."

There was a powerful spark of fear and frustration in Conan's eyes, so strong it almost surprised her. It shouldn't have, since she knew how much he cared for Yuuichi, but his eyes--blue eyes, just like Yuu-chan's--were dark with barely-restrained emotion.

"Conan-kun...?"

He pushed up from the wall, beginning to recover his breath. "Gonna get my skateboard and go looking for him again," he stated, brushing past her to pause on the stairs. "You should stay here, in case he comes back or if anyone calls."

"But--Conan-kun, you--!" She was too late--he'd already dashed up to the office to fetch his skateboard, disappearing for a few moments within to find it.

He rushed out the door again, taking the stairs two at a time as he hopped down, board under his arm. He stopped at her side for but a moment, looking up at her with eyes so deep that for a second she was taken aback.

"I will find him. I promise you, Ran-neechan--I won't let anything happen to him."

She could hardly find the breath to reply. "Conan-kun..."

But he was already gone, pushing off on his skateboard in a whirl of dust and wind, streaking off down the sidewalk in a blur that vanished from her sight before she got her breath back.

Once again, she was left alone. Her hands tight and white-knuckled again, she stared after Conan for a few moments, once again wishing she could just see her Yuu-chan running home to her.

Then, with a hard swallow and a small sound that was almost a sob, she whirled to hurry into the office to wait anxiously by the telephone.

_to be continued_


	5. Part 4: Find A Reason

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_I'm not sure what happened,  
But here I am alone,  
Trying to find a way  
To find a reason that you're gone.  
I don't know if I'm shaking  
From the rhythm of these wheels,  
Or if it's my heart breaking  
And this is how it feels.  
This is how it feels...  
_--Jessica Andrews, "Windows On A Train"

**Part 4: Find A Reason**

Yuuichi stared about in unabashed curiosity and awe at the interior of the room Haibara Ai had requisitioned as her laboratory. It was much cleaner than the room the men outside had occupied--there was not a speck of dust or hint of a takeout wrapper _anywhere_. The window here was boarded off too, but the room was still coolly bright inside, illuminating the many tables and cabinets that lined the walls--some built-in, some obviously moved here for this purpose.

There was another very nice computer in here as well, along with so many different machines and instruments that Yuuichi couldn't begin to identify them. He recognized several kinds of microscopes, a balance, and two whole tables full of test-tubes, beakers, pipes, bunsen burners, and other chemical nicknacks--but all the rest of the stuff was beyond him. His curiosity tingled, superceding his nervousness, making him wish Niichan was here to tell him about these things. There were so many neat items, and Niichan would know about them all...

But Haibara-san tugged on his hand, leading him over to one of the less-cluttered tables. "Come on, Yuuichi-kun. It's time to go to work. We have to hurry a little."

"What are we gonna do?" Obediently, Yuuichi followed, noting that most of the things on _this_ table looked like stuff he'd seen at the doctor's office. There was even a stethoscope. "Haibara-san? Are you a doctor? I thought doctors had to be grownups."

"Smart boy..." Ai smiled a little, glancing down at him. "Actually, I'm not exactly a doctor," she replied, as he allowed her to lift him up to sit in one of the stool-seats by the table. She kept the chairs in here a bit tall, so she could reach her own equipment. "I'm a scientist. Do you know what a scientist is?"

Solemnly, Yuuichi nodded, watching as she began to fetch various tools and lay them out on the desk. "A doctor works in an office and takes care of people. When you get sick, they make you better." He looked a bit nervous when she reached into a drawer to get a sealed package of needles. "Niichan told me...um, a scientist works in a lab and..._researches_ things to help people. They look for new things that doctors can do."

Ai shook her head in faint amazement. "Smart boy," she murmured again, reaching to a rack of vials for a couple to put samples in. "I'll bet you don't get sick very often, Yuuichi-kun."

"No," the boy replied, hands folded politely in his lap but his feet fidgeting nervously. "I just get a cold sometimes."

Ai nodded to herself. _Noted that with Kudo-kun--excellent health, except for a respiratory weakness. The similarity with Yuuichi should mean increased compatibility. But I can't doubt now--I have to pray all my theories and research are right..._

"Haibara-san?"

The small voice broke into her ruminations, and she glanced up into worried blue eyes.

"Um...are you gonna give me a shot?" the little boy asked quietly. "'Cause...you're not a doctor. I don't think you're _s'posed_ to."

"It's alright," she replied, offering her best reassuring smile. "I don't know if I'll have to give you a shot, but I will need a sample of your blood eventually. I know I'm not a doctor, but..." She thought for a moment. "I'm a scientist, remember? I'm looking for ways to help people. And I need _you_ to help me with that."

Yuuichi considered that for a while, watching her hands reach toward the stethoscope. "Why?"

Ai paused, serious, trying to frame her answer correctly. "Well...Yuuichi-kun...remember when I said your father needs help?"

He nodded, large solemn eyes set in a pale, worried face.

"This is part of that help. Let's just say...your father has a disease, and he's had it for a very long time and needs my help...and I need you to help me make a cure for him."

Yuuichi suddenly looked alarmed. "Touchan's _sick?_"

"No...well, in a way he is..." The abrupt turn from solemn little boy to upset child made Ai uncomfortable, as unused to dealing with such young children as she was. She hadn't wanted to frighten him, but she wasn't sure how she could explain it to him. "He's not going to die from the sickness...but...if he doesn't get better from it, those bad men I told you about...he won't be able to stop them and they'll hurt him..."

Yuuichi almost sniffled. "I don't want Touchan to get hurt."

"Then will you help me, Yuuichi?" Ai asked, reaching out just as she had back in the schoolyard. "I need you for this. When it's all over...you'll understand...someday..."

Looking down at his small, folded hands, the little boy shrugged. "I guess...it's okay . I wanna help Touchan."

"Don't be scared," Ai tried to reassure him. "I promise, I won't hurt you. It'll be...well, pretty much just like when you go to the doctor with your mother."

Yuuichi looked up at her again, took a deep breath to steady his courage, and nodded.

Privately, Ai was glad that Yuuichi wasn't like other small children she'd observed; frankly, if she couldn't reason with something, or use a logical discussion, she didn't often know what to do with it. Which was one of the reasons sweet little Ayumi-chan had often baffled her so, with her smiles and her affection and her completely unconditional friendship...

She was very glad for Yuuichi's cooperation as she proceeded with her work--taking heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure, temperature, pupil response, reflex checks, and more...a gamut of little tests before she did anything else, which would determine the boy's base state. Overall, Yuuichi was in excellent health, fit and sturdy.

He wasn't squeamish about any of the tests, not in the slightest--instead, asking question after question about this or that tool and what she was doing, nearly overwhelming Ai with his curiosity. She had to wonder to herself how Kudo-kun managed to keep up with this hungry little mind--but then, perhaps Kudo-kun was the best sort of person to parent a child like this, since he was just as intelligent, and had lived in the shoes of a child himself and would listen to and understand the boy. Father and son were so much alike anyway, it was no wonder Yuuichi adored his "Niichan" so.

To her surprise, Yuuichi even sat perfectly still--eyes closed at first and his face comically scrunched up--when she drew blood for her numerous samples, filling several tiny vials for all the purposes she had for it. Early in the process, Yuuichi lost his worry over the needle's sting and opened his eyes to watch, rather fascinated, as the little glass containers filled up, one by one as she attached each to the needle.

Yuuichi was only a little disappointed that she didn't have any pretty, multi-colored, character-adorned band-aids in her drawer--just _ordinary_ ones.

And then, with that, Ai was done with him for now. She had to run tests on the blood samples, to determine what steps would follow. Until then, she would have to find something for him to do...a prospect she had little knowledge of and less experience with.

"This is the boring part now," she told the boy as she helped him down from the chair. "I have to work on this for a while, so...I guess..." Perplexed, and not pleased about it, she shifted her weight and frowned. "Would you like something to eat?"

Yuuichi's eyes lit up. "Can I? I'm hungry--I didn't get any lunch yet."

"Well...let's...go see if the men have anything." With the eager little boy on her heels, she headed back out to the main room where her bored colleagues--those who were not on perimeter duty or monitoring--were laying about playing cards, drinking soda, or snoozing. "Gentlemen!" she announced into the quiet, startling several of them upright.

Yakamoto-san, on the monitoring equipment, glanced up unconcernedly. "No news is good news, Haibara-kun. Cops are looking for a missing kid, and Iori-kun says Edogawa stopped by the Agency for a skateboard, but not much else is going on out there."

Ai nodded. "I'm glad to hear that Mouri-chan and her friends aren't overreacting." She glanced at the dented refrigerator near the stairs, then looked about for Akai--who was sitting quietly in a far corner, watching everything. "Is there any food left?" she asked of the group in general. "Yuuichi-kun is hungry, and needs something to do while I work."

"I'm already babysitting the phones, so no thanks." Yakamoto-san shrugged and waved at the fridge. "Think there's some noodles left over from last night."

"Eiji-kun?" Ai asked of the shaggy-haired young man on the computer.

"Busy," he replied, not even glancing up from the screen.

Now Ai was starting to be _annoyed_. She had work to do, Yuuichi was hungry, and _someone_ needed to take care of it so _she_ could get back to her lab. "Akai Shuichi!" she announced, making eye contact with her most loyal associate. "Here--look after Yuuichi. I have to finish my research."

Akai actually looked _startled_. "But..."

"It can't be that hard," Ai interrupted. "Just feed him and make sure he doesn't get into anything that he shouldn't."

Silent at her side, Yuuichi just looked from Ai to Akai and back again. "Haibara-san...?"

"Stay here with Akai," Ai told him, a bit less severely. "He'll look after you for a little while, until I come back. Be good, okay?"

A little worried now, Yuuichi nodded solemnly. Leaving him there, Ai turned and reentered her laboratory, closing the door behind her.

Yuuichi stood still, looking very small, glancing from person to person as the group of men looked rather uncomfortable--Akai supremely so.

"Well," the dark-haired man finally said, rising to his feet. "I suppose I'd better find you something to eat."

Yuuichi smiled shyly and followed him.

* * *

In her lab, Ai was already beginning to manipulate her samples--some in the centrifuge, some with chemical tests, some under the microscope, some in the DNA analyzer. It made her lab noisier than it had been in a long while, to have this much going at once.

And really, she couldn't deny that she herself was very interested in what she would find out. She'd never managed to convince Kudo-kun to let her run some of these tests on him; he would allow nothing beyond what was needed to research a cure. And Professor Agasa--bless that man--though he had plenty of equipment and a very good budget, he couldn't quite afford much of what she was using now.

Her scientific curiosity had nagged her for the longest time--and still did--wanting to know what made someone like Kudo Shinichi tick.

The DNA analysis always took far too long for her taste.

She occupied herself at her microscopes, doing the initial explorations of Yuuichi's cells manually. He seemed healthy enough by her other tests, and all his blood counts were optimum. He showed no deficiencies, and the cells under the microscope were healthy and active.

_So were Kudo-kun's,_ she remembered to herself. _And he was living under the influence of the apotoxin even longer than me. I've been slightly anemic ever since then, but he was always just fine. He and I both have a half-immunity to APTX 4869's effects--it won't kill us, but it will still harm us..._

Even the electron microscope gave no ill answers about Yuuichi's cells. The chemical tests, however, yielded alarming and confusing results.

With herself as a test model, her hypothesis had been correct. The APTX 4869 stayed in the victim's body indefinitely--staying in the cells it affected, its chemical structure too heavy for the body to flush out. Thus, the apotoxin that lingered in Kudo's cells--including his reproductive cells--had been incorporated into the cells of his offspring. According to her theory, Yuuichi carried the same elements of the apotoxin in his own body.

But with the proper chemical tags, her observation through the microscope revealed that her other guess had been correct as well--though not in the way she had thought it would be. Yuuichi was apparently natively immune to the toxin's effects...but to Ai's surprise, the apotoxin itself did not exist in his body.

The bodies of Kudo-kun and herself contained segmented components of the apotoxin--no longer deadly since it wasn't in its complete state, having already reacted in their bodies. A good thing, too--otherwise, they might have been a danger to anyone who happened to get into their blood or saliva...or possibly even _touched_ them.

And the apotoxin _stayed_ in their cells--in those repressive, heavy molecular chains, having completed its violent chemical reaction and made itself a permanent fixture in their cells, irrevocably damaging their telomeres. Though once a victim was dead these molecular chains would not be noticed by forensic scientists, for the living subject the continued presence of these ugly leftovers made a permanent cure impossible; the antitoxin she had formulated, while perfectly functional, only reacted with the apotoxin to restore it to its original state--detatching it from their cells and freeing them to return to their original forms as well--but the restored apotoxin would only begin anew the same catastrophic reaction that reduced their bodies again and again. A vicious, never-ending cycle.

Ai had truly expected to find these same chemical traces in Yuuichi's blood cells--and with how perfectly normal the little boy's body was, he could have been the carrier of the very antitoxin she needed.

Instead, she found nothing at all. No reacted chains of the toxin could be traced anywhere within the cells' metabolisms. It was as if the APTX elements present at his conception had simply...disappeared.

Ai sat for several moments, staring at a vial of blood sample in her hand and wondering where her carful thought and planning and reasearch had gone wrong. Without being able to study how Yuuichi's body functioned with the apotoxin, she had no way of figuring out how to permanently reverse Kudo's condition. She had nothing but a dead end--the chemical traces of the apotoxin were simply, inexplicably _gone_...

Or were they?

A sudden, half-hopeful epiphany spurred her to motion again, this time searching not for a puzzle, but for the pieces themselves. The apotoxin was not where it should have been--she had been expecting to find the same footprints that it had left on her body as well as Kudo's. But she knew it had to be there--she knew it, because it couldn't just disappear into thin air. If it was there, but she just wasn't looking in the right places...

Ai had designed APTX 4869, and she knew it top to bottom and inside out, every single molecular chain that made it up. It was made to be untraceable--but she knew how to trace it. If it was there--if even the tiniest _fragment_ if it was there--she would find it. She would solve this mystery as surely as Kudo-kun worked out a murder; the truth was just waiting for her to uncover it.

With her persistence, she did. And the truth, in all its simplicity, was more awe-inspiring and confounding than any of her thoughts and theories could have been.

The molecules were so ordinary and unnoticeable that only someone who knew what they were looking for could have spotted them--someone like Ai herself. A common doctor or lab technician would not even know what they were looking at--would not even bat an eye at the faint traces that might come up in the child's blood work.

In Yuuichi's body, the apotoxin had been broken down into bare fragments of molecules, which his cells metabolized and processed as if they were normal nutrients--concealing them amidst the normal bustle of activity that took place inside each tiny life-factory. The hidden, out-of-place substances did not affect him at all, either in size or rate of growth; his body had deconstructed the apotoxin, turning it into completely benign molecules.

His cells contained and transported the faint, lingering, shattered fragments of the apotoxin like a group of children ignorantly carrying around different parts of a disassembled gun--not dangerous unless it was put together properly. Since his entire being had been conceived with the deadly chemicals already present, his body knew how to handle it.

Further tests revealed that not only did his cells metabolize those elements, they also _required_ them. Molecules that were typical to a normal human's body had been replaced with the heavier-element chemicals of the apotoxin. His metabolism had somehow broken it down, scattered it, and built around it--a unique symbiosis she had never dreamed was possible.

In order to survive with the toxin inside him, his body been forced to adapt from the moment it was created--but it had adapted in such a way that he could not survive _without_ the elements of the apotoxin, either.

That fact in itself was just as much of a surprise to Ai, but it also pleased her. It only increased the chances that this venture would be a success--in fact, perhaps a hundredfold increase from her original hypothesis.

If what she was beginning to imagine was in fact true, she would not just be limited to reversing the effects of the apotoxin--she would be able to completely _cure_ it. Her tests had shown that Yuuichi was already natively immune; if she was right, the apotoxin could be rendered completely inert and harmless in his body, and she would finally have a working, permanent remedy.

The DNA analysis was finished not a moment too soon. She dove into the calculation and computation with glee--though no observer might have noted any change in her expression.

The first and most urgent thing she checked were Yuuichi's telomeres--protein sequences on the ends of each strand of DNA, which protected that strand throughout cell divisions and kept the ends from "unraveling." Telomeres played a large part in aging--and it was the telomeres that APTX 4869 damaged the most. Even if he was able to metabolize the toxin's components, if his telomeres were affected in any way, her entire theory would come crashing down.

Thankfully, Yuuichi's telomeres were completely healthy, much to Ai's relief. Healthy and long--long telomeres, long life.

Then, as she began to go over the data the machine had composed for her--which had been merely a field analysis, not an in-depth genetic map--her mask of professionalism gave way to a look of astonishment...and perhaps awe. Though she knew she should have expected something like this...just to have it put down in numbers and graphs that her scientific mind could read made it all the more incredible.

Even this brief analysis showed factors that put the Black Organization's entire genetic engineering research program to shame. She almost couldn't believe what she was seeing here--the blueprints of a being with absolutely extraordinary mental faculties; almost inhumanly high intelligence and memory, gifted with rapid growth and development and immense capacity to learn and recall. Even the aspects of nerve transmission velocity, reflexes, and precise coordination--even the five senses themselves and the fitness and strength of the body that contained and propelled them...

Ai had known that Kudo Shinichi--and his son--were very special, but to this extent...

These were gene sequences that her former associates had spent _years_ trying to develop in the lab--_and_ somehow manage to adapt into a living person--with little to no success. But here they were, present and abundant--in advanced form--in this child. Kudo-kun himself was a stunning example of this same genetic code, and his largely dominant genes had gifted Yuuichi with these remarkable characteristics--and not only that, but Yuuichi's DNA was also enhanced by and adapted to Mouri-chan's genetic contribution, showing that this bloodline only improved itself over time. And Yuuichi, through some miracle, had apparently acquired the ability to metabolize APTX 4869--a developmental jump that had taken only _one generation_ to accomplish.

She had to wonder _how_, in the course of human development through generations of random breeding, had anyone--even unknowingly--managed to produce specimens like Kudo-kun and this child. Decades of human science and endeavor were put to shame by the simple hand of Nature itself.

And as she read those graphs, stared at those awesome/terrifying numbers, a cold chill of realization swept over her. She had been in and out of the Genetics programs in the Syndicate, but her area of expertise had been and still was the field of chemical biology. But back then, she'd heard whispers of what they had been trying to do--trying to construct a perfect agent...a perfect killer, mind and body alike.

The information and intelligence gathered by associates of her new comrades had indicated that, for some reason, the Black Organization had been interested in certain individuals--one of which was Kudo Shinichi in particular. She had not understood why, nor had she made the connection between their interest in Kudo and their genetics agenda--until, perhaps, this moment.

If it was not Kudo-kun _himself_ they were interested in, but the secrets locked within his genetic code...

That made Yuuichi just as much of a target, she realized, sitting still and horrified at her desk. Perhaps more of a target, if Yuuichi had the capability to exceed his sire. That had to be it--if they couldn't figure out how to build a better agent, they had to find someone who carried blueprints they _could_ use. Or, in Yuuichi's case, someone who was possibly young enough to be _trainable_. And if they liked what they got, they could literally copy him...

An agent like Kudo Shinichi, with Gin's bloodlust and cruelty, obedient to the cold leaders of the Organization--people like _Vermouth_...the very idea was frightening. Unthinkable.

There was no way she could let such a thing happen. Which was why she had to produce a cure, and restore Kudo Shinichi so that he could _stop them_.

Reaching into the locked safe at the far corner of the room, Haibara Ai withdrew a very small case and held it gingerly in her hands. Opening the case with delicate fingers, she stared down at the red-and-white capsules within--her _last few_ remaining doses of the original APTX 4869. Doses which had cost her two years and many comrades to finally acquire. They'd had to steal them from the offices of the Syndicate itself.

And now, she would spend these final capsules to do her last tests on Yuuichi's cells, to see if her hopeful, desperate theory was really true. And even then, they wouldn't know until they tried it--and the trial might be their last and only chance. She couldn't be exactly sure of anything in this any more; even the cure itself could be life or death.

But she had been gambling lives ever since she'd left Shinichi alone without explanation, running everything on a fine edge of risk and hope, just to find some way to fix this mess that just kept getting worse...

Until she'd learned of Kudo-kun's child--knowledge that had sparked a crazy idea which spurred her to motion. Renewed _hope_, and renewed risk. There was a distant possibility that one child might have what she needed to save Kudo, so she'd planned and waited and hoped for so long until the time was nearly right. And now, on what could be their eve of destruction, she was going to risk it all _again_--future, hope, and all their lives--in one last gamble that all centered on this one child...

One last gamble that could finally free Kudo Shinichi...so that he could save them all...

* * *

When Ran's mother arrived home from work, Kogoro in tow--apparently they'd met up to do some "secret shopping"--they did not receive the news of Yuuichi's absence very well at all.

For one, Eri was furious that her daughter had not called her to let her know, even if Ran explained that she hadn't wanted to worry anyone. Kogoro simply stomped and fumed and complained in general, looking for someone to blame for this catastrophe--insisting to call the police headquarters to see if Megure and his "useless layabouts" had come up with anything.

Though there really wasn't much anyone could do that had not already been done, Eri set about calling any and all of their acquaintances, to see if Yuuichi had, by any chance, turned up at any of their homes. This in turn made Ran even more worried that her mother was tying up the phone line if someone needed to call in with information. Kogoro continued his pensive ranting, quickly transferring the blame to Conan for teaching his impressionable young grandson so many bad habits, and for allowing the boy to run off like this--even if Conan had been a block away in his own classroom at the time.

The cake and the birthday preparations lay forgotten on the table, just as the dinner ingredients sat untouched in the kitchen. Ran sat, silent and near to tears, as her parents orbited in flurries of motion, their voices raised with worry and upset. She was heartsick and afraid for her son, tired and overwrought from worry and waiting. She felt so helpless, like she wasn't doing enough--even poor Conan-kun was out there somewhere, trying to find Yuuichi...

She didn't know how much longer she could sit here and do nothing.

Edogawa Conan, halfway across town and still finding no sign of Yuuichi, was not in much better shape.

In fact, he was probably worse off. Because he _knew_ what could happen to his son--he _knew_ who might have already found him and snatched him away.

But it was still daylight, and his skateboard still worked, and even if he was bedraggled and sweaty and exhausted, he was still looking. He darted through traffic and around clumps of pedestrians, alarming people and drivers alike as he flew uncaringly down streets and through intersections.

The skateboard that Professor Agasa had made for him was quite a marvel, and went much faster than any normal one. But it no longer zipped along as quickly as it once had, and it could no longer run on the turbine alone; as he grew, Conan's increasing weight required that he use his foot to help push along, especially up an incline. But it was still his quickest mode of travel, and no ordinary skateboard could glide so fast or cruise for so long.

Without it, he would never have covered so much ground so quickly, but he was already beginning to feel as if this would never be enough. Tokyo was so huge, and Yuuichi was just one tiny boy...

The Black Organization had hundreds of agents, and he was just one person...

He pulled to a stop at the next street corner, panting deep breaths and glancing around to get his bearings. He was already far beyond anywhere Yuuichi might've gotten on foot--but by now all he could do was try to find a trace of kidnappers.

God, how he wished Ran had let him give a Detective Boys badge to Yuuichi...they might have been able to track him somehow...

Uncomfortably hot, he slid out of his uniform jacket and tied it around his waist, grimacing as he did. His backtracking to the Teitan Elementary playground had given him no clues either--no footprints, no signs of scuffle, no single trace of Yuuichi anywhere. It was as if the child had walked out the back gate and vanished into thin air.

Which meant someone had to have picked him up in a car. And without an indication of a fight, that meant someone had talked him into leaving with them.

But _who_--and _how_--could that be? Yuuichi knew better--how could he have just let himself be taken away? Had it been someone he knew? He knew Jodie-sensei, but she had been back there at the school...and for some inconceivable reason, Conan had believed her when she told him she didn't have the boy. Who else did Yuuichi know that might have done this? A friend would have _called_ by now to tell them where he was...

_And if they tracked him down, Agasa would have called me,_ Conan thought, as the light turned green and he pushed his skateboard into motion once more. _His house was one of the first places I looked. Genta-tachi hasn't seen Yuu-kun at all since this morning, and he hasn't been to any of the usual places..._

Sailing along at top speed, Conan scowled as a thought occurred to him. _If this is just Hattori pulling a fast one on me, I swear I'm going to kill him,_ he thought hotly. _Friend or not, I'll rip his guts out and make him **eat** them for putting Ran through this. This goes way beyond a prank--dammit, this is **serious!**_

That idea made him reach into his pockets for his phone--the gadget that had once been shaped like a gaudy earring but had since been modified into a simple microphone and speaker that fit over the ear, a hands-free device that Conan much preferred to the silly-looking design of the past. The telephone itself was a small unit that, once dialed, could remain in his pocket as he rushed along on his skateboard.

The cell phone on the other end rang for quite a while, exasperating Conan further.

"Moshi-mosh'--Hattori Heiji speaking,"

_Finally._ "Hattori! Took you long enough!"

"Oi, Kudo, that you? Sorry, I'm kinda in the middle of somethin'--"

"Shut up and listen--are you here, and is Yuuichi with you?"

"What? What the hell are you talkin' about?"

"I'll take that as a 'no.'" Conan gritted his teeth. Heiji sounded too surprised and clueless to be lying.

"Hell, I'm not even in Tokyo--I'm solvin' a murder case here in Osaka," Heiji responded, still sounding perplexed--and now slightly worried. "What's going on, Kudo?"

"Yuuichi's missing," Conan stated tersely, dodging a pair of ladies stepping out of a department store.

"No shit?" Heiji went from puzzled to seriously concerned in a heartbeat. "What happened?"

"He disappeared from the school grounds this morning--didn't come back in from recess--and there's not a trace of him anywhere. The cops are on the lookout and I've been combing the city since it happened..."

"Damn. Neechan must be having fits. Have you--?"

"Yes, dammit, I've checked all the usual places!" Conan spat at him. "The worst part is _that woman_ at the school said _she_ didn't know either but now that he's missing they're after him too! God, I've been _everywhere_ today and _I still can't find him!_"

"Shit..."

Heiji went silent for long moments as Conan turned down a new street and upped his speed. "No kidding," he hissed at his Osaka friend, beyond his wits' end already and lacking the patience to be polite.

"Have you been lookin' for black suits too?"

"Of course I have, dumbass," Conan snapped. "Though I don't know _what_ I'll do if I see one of _them_ right now. If I catch up to them, it _won't_ be pretty."

"Damn," Heiji repeated, his own voice dark with concern. "You keep lookin', Kudo. I'll be out there as soon as I can get myself on a plane. Don't do anything _stupid_, but don't you stop searchin' for a _second_, you hear me?"

"You don't have to tell me that," Conan growled. "And watch yourself--if _they're_ up and about you never know what might happen."

"Copy that," Heji replied. "I'll have this solved in a jiff and be there in a flash. You watch your back too, Kudo."

"It's not _my_ back I'm worried about," Conan snapped, before hanging up and shoving the earpiece back in his pocket. _Not me I'm worried about,_ he echoed in his mind. _I don't care about me--I'm worried about Yuuichi. If anything happens to him..._

He could not even begin to imagine how his heart and soul would shatter if he lost his son.

_to be continued_


	6. Part 5: Little Piece of This Dream

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_She spends her days up in the north park,  
Watching the people as they pass.  
And all she wants is just a little piece of  
This dream, is that too much to ask?  
With a safe home, and a warm bed, on a  
Quiet little street.  
All she wants is just that something to  
Hold onto, that's all she needs.  
_--3 Doors Down, "Be Like That"

**Part 5: Little Piece of This Dream**

Two hours after she began her final research, Haibara Ai at last emerged from her lab, tired and drained but hopeful and victorious.

However, the scene that greeted her was not what she had expected to find upon exiting her lab.

Perhaps the stress had gotten to her. Maybe it was eyestrain. Maybe she should go back in, clear her head, and come back out.

This was most certainly _not_ a tableau of bored, lazy men and a well-fed, possibly-napping child.

There was laughter and comfortable chatter coming from the center of the room, where one of the tables had been cleared of papers and equipment, set up with takeout leftovers, and surrounded by the majority of her comrades. Only Eiji-kun--who could never unplug himself from his computer--and Yakamoto-san on communications were not taking part in the apparent merriment.

Dazed, she stumbled closer to the cluster of chuckling operatives, staring. On the other side of the table, a "high chair" had been constructed of a stool with several thick operations manuals stacked on it--atop which was perched a certain small boy. In front of him and the circle of men was a space cleared of microwaved food and scattered with playing cards and piles of M&M candies.

Mouri Yuuichi had a comically serious look in his face as he peered over the top of his hand like a professional cardsharp. Apparently the game had just come to a close, because the small voice piped, "Call!" over the lower tones of the soldiers. Everyone laid out their hands...and there were exaggerated groans all around as the winners and losers were sorted out.

"I win!" Yuuichi chirped, giggling as he scooped the pile of M&Ms at the center closer to himself.

Finally, Ai regained the power of speech. "Just _what_ is going on here?" she demanded, her voice sounding oddly shrill, even to her ears.

Nearly all of the men jumped around like guilty thieves--while Yuuichi only looked up at her and smiled. Her associates managed to look suitably abashed, setting down their cards and fidgeting like teenagers about to be scolded.

Akai was still sitting in the same corner she'd left him in two hours ago, looking like he hadn't budged an inch. And if she wasn't mistaken, the idiot was trying to hide a smirk.

"Uh, hello, Haibara," one of the bolder operatives, Hiroshi, ventured to say. "Didn't think you'd come out so soon. We were...uh...keepin' the kid here entertained..."

Ai managed to glare at him. "You...are letting a _three-year-old child _...play _poker?_"

"Just for M&M's," Daisuke replied defensively from the opposite side of the table. "It's not like we'd play for real with a little kid..."

Unconsciously, Ai's hands had gone to her hips in proper scolding fashion. "But you taught him to play _poker_."

"Well, sort of," Hiroshi chuckled nervously. "Actually, he kinda surprised us when he figured it out on his own by watchin' us play. So...we kinda let him try. And damned if he's not _good_ at it, too. He cleaned Mamoru-kun out in a flash."

"It's fun, Haibara-san!" Yuuichi affirmed from his spot, grinning as he held up his winning two pairs for her observation. "I gots _lots_ of M&M's! Want some?"

"No thank you, Yuuichi-kun." Ai pinched the bridge of her nose. _Of course, he inherits Mouri-chan's "skill" at games. What else..._ "All of you...just...kindly consider that I have to send this boy back to his mother in good condition. And if he's been thoroughly corrupted by incorrigible soldiers like you, I won't have a _chance_ of surviving my encounter with his parents. If he turns into a little gambler, I'm going to tell Mouri-chan it was all _your_ doing, and let her have you."

That drew some rather surprised, incredulous glances; as far as they knew, there were very few things in the world that could scare their Haibara-san, and the prospect of facing an angry mother who could make even _her_ nervous was not a welcome one. _Still_ resembling a pack of guilty teenagers, the group of grown men mumbled apologetic-sounding things and started picking up their mess, reclaiming the playing cards and leaving Yuuichi to his hard-won--or maybe easily-won--M&M candies.

With a deep sigh, Ai shook her head in exasperation. Really, these were the men who were supposed to assist and protect her? "Yuuichi-kun," she called, turning to the boy. "Bring your candy and come with me. I'm going to need you again."

"What're we doing now, Haibara-san?" the child asked, collecting the last few scattered candies. Yuuichi had so many M&Ms that finding a way to carry them all required some problem-solving. Fortunately, along with all the other impromptu dining supplies there was a stack of large paper cups lying fallen over on the table, half out of its package, so the quick-minded preschooler requisitioned one to hold his prizes.

"We're going back to my lab," Ai told him as he approached, cup of candy cradled carefully in both hands. Her face had gone strangely closed. "I've finished my research...and now on to the experimentation stage."

Yuuichi watched as Ai snagged yet another of the paper cups and carried it with her to the table next to Yakamoto-san's, where she filled it with something warm from the insulated jug there. "Follow me," she instructed, leading him once more into the laboratory.

The child paused in the doorway to look over his shoulder at Akai-san, and cheerfully waved goodbye. Akai nodded faintly in return.

Inside the quiet lab with the door shut once more, Yuuichi glanced about and, seeing that nothing had changed, munched a couple M&Ms out of his cache and regarded Ai with definite curiosity. "Didja make the medicine for Touchan? You were working a long time."

"Not quite yet," Ai replied, almost distractedly, as she set the filled cup on the nearest table and crossed the room to pick up a small case made of metal. "But I'm getting very, very close."

Ai found it difficult to school her expression to cool neutrality, especially when Yuuichi regarded her with those wide blue eyes, innocent and unafraid. He had already come to trust her as a friend of his father's, yet he had no idea what she was really like, or what she had planned.

She herself wasn't quite sure of the outcome of the next step in her experiment. The hours of research she had done indicated that this _would_ work, and she had faith in her knowledge of biochemistry and her skill as a scientist. Her work on Yuuichi's cells, exhaustive as it had been, had proven beyond doubt that her new, revised theory was indeed correct.

Yet if that was the case, _why_ did she feel hesitation?

Ai opened the box, looking down at the last two capsules. The very last two--and if this failed, they would have to start all over again. Scratch that--if this failed...she didn't want to think of the consequences. That's why she knew that this _would not fail_.

Selecting a capsule, she put the case aside and regarded Yuuichi for a moment, glancing from pill to boy and back again. Considering for a moment, she changed her mind and cracked open the capsule over the cup of warm tea, carefully spilling the powdery contents into the liquid, where it swirled and disappeared.

The empty gel capsule was cautiously placed in a small jar and sealed. Then she picked up the cup and turned to the still-curious, now-puzzled little boy, who still stood by the door waiting politely.

Her throat was suddenly very dry as she took the last few steps to cover the distance between them. This _would_ work--her research had proven that. She'd done extensive tests, with all combinations and quantities. There was no way she could fail--she knew her science, and Yuuichi's cells were a scientific marvel. Of _course_ this would work.

But...if it didn't work...if she was _wrong_...then Yuuichi would _die_...

One more sin to add to her already-lengthy list. And all her research, all her theories, all her work and experiments and labor would be for _nothing_ if he died from this.

But if she didn't try, they would all die anyway.

_Either path could mean death for this child,_ she thought, gazing into the brillant blue eyes. _And he only stands there looking at me...trusting me..._

Ai took a deep breath, offering him the lethal cup. "Here, Yuuichi-kun, drink this." _Mouri-chan...Kudo-kun...forgive me..._

She held his candy for him as he obediently took the tea from her, frowning slightly as he looked down at the slightly-steaming contents. He obviously didn't prefer Western teas, but after a moment he lifted it to his lips and sipped, making a face.

"It's yucky," he complained.

"I know," Ai replied neutrally. "There's no sugar in it, and the medicine I put in it might be bad-tasting. But I need you to drink all of it." _The cup of Death is always bitter..._

Yuuichi deflated somewhat, looking highly reluctant. Then he seemed to steel himself and bucked up. "It's for Touchan's medicine, right? I'll drink it."

And the small boy proceeded to swallow the entire death-laced cup of tea, in quick little gulps with many a sour face in between--but he did it completely and without complaint, only sticking his tongue out at the empty cup afterwards. "Blegh!"

Her hands were shaking as Ai took back the cup, setting it carefully on the table to be incinerated later. Mouri Yuuichi had just swallowed an entire adult-sized dose of APTX 4869--enough to kill a grown man in only a few minutes. If a child was going to die from the toxin it should, mercifully, take even less time.

And even if he suffered the half-immune malady that she and Kudo did, Yuuichi didn't _have_ ten years of life to spare.

He'd barely lived _three_.

"There," she found herself saying, her throat strangely constricted as she got down a few sheets of printer paper and some pencils. "Why...why don't you go draw something quietly for a little while, okay? You can take your candy with you. I have to see what that medicine does when you take it...it might make you a little bit ill..."

Yuuichi looked worried at this, but it was more of a confused-worried than a scared-worried. Medicine, in his opinion, was supposed to _help_ you, not make you sick--even if it tasted awful. But he set himself up on the floor near the corner with the paper and pencils, and went about drawing a nice picture of Haibara-san and Akai-san to show Kaachan later.

Ai sat down with a shaky breath on the stool in front of her computer, watching the child. So far, no adverse reaction. By her reckoning, he might get a bit of stomach upset, perhaps a mild fever or slight dizziness as his body reacted to the presence of the whole-formula apotoxin--but nothing more severe; his cells had proven they could metabolize the chemical formula successfully. And he wasn't showing a hint of reaction, even after two minutes and forty-eight seconds.

She began to breathe easier as he failed to fall over dead; her hands still shaking from adrenaline, she turned to make an entry in her computer about her success.

She'd been right! Yuuichi was the key to solving the whole problem--his body was adapted to the chemicals of the apotoxin and could process them without the same lethal or debilitating effects it had on other non-adapted humans. And if she hadn't taken the initiative to study the chemical processing properties in his cells, she never would have...

In her elation, it took Ai several seconds to notice that Yuuichi was no longer humming softly to himself, and the scratching of pencil on paper was no more. With a start, she swiveled on her stool to look at him, seeing that he had gone still where he sat cross-legged on the floor.

He wasn't drawing any more, and his small arms were hugged tight about his stomach.

"Yuuichi-kun...?" she inquired, faintly worried.

He turned slightly to glance at her, his little face gone sharp and pale. "Haibara-san...my tummy hurts."

A cold tingle shot down her spine. Before she realized it, she was at his side, one hand brushing aside his bangs to feel his forehead.

His skin was shockingly hot, and already slick with sweat.

_He **is** reacting,_ she thought, wondering why she felt so worried. "It's alright, Yuuichi-kun," she responded. "It's the medicine...I told you it might make you a little sick..."

"But it's _hot_...an' hurts really bad..." He was shaking now, in trembling little jerks.

_Oh no..._ She'd thought she could _handle_ this. She'd thought she knew what she was doing. She was sure she could deal with what she had to do.

She could--until the tears squeezed themselves out of Yuuichi's stricken eyes and his small body seemed to curl further into itself, shaking like a leaf in the wind.

"It hurts...all over..." came the trembling little whisper, falling into a sob. "I-I want my Kaachan...!"

"Yuuichi-kun..." _No--no...this isn't just a mild reaction, this is--this is the real thing._ She was frozen in faint horror for long moments, her mind whirling with disbelief and unfamiliar panic. _No! He's not supposed to react this badly! I did my tests, my reasearch--only a little reaction, not a full-blown fever! It's supposed to be neutralized--it's not supposed to do this--!_

"Hurts..." he choked, as he began to cry. "It hurts...!

Haibara Ai didn't know what else to do. So she followed the impulse that welled up from deep inside and pulled the tiny boy into her lap, holding him close in her arms, sitting there on the floor and rocking him.

The small body shook with what were almost spasms as he cried, clinging to her as she stroked his hair and murmured softly to him--hiding the tears that threatened to well in her own eyes at the child's horrible suffering. "Yuuichi...Yuu-chan...hold on...it'll be over soon...just hold on..."

One way or another, it _would_ be.

She had been through this. She had lived this unbelievable hell, thinking she was going to die. _Knowing_ she was going to die.

And now an innocent child was suffering through it, not even knowing why--hardly understanding at all why it hurt so bad, why it burned so hot, why it wouldn't stop.

He didn't even know he could be dying.

_This isn't supposed to be happening!_ her mind screamed inside, frantic, as she held him tight and tried to soothe him. She was completely helpless, utterly at a loss--Yuuichi could die, and Shinichi would hate her _forever_ and it would be _completely_ her fault this time, and if he wanted to kill her she'd more than deserve it. The tears she'd been holding back finally fell as she pressed her cheek to the boy's soft hair.

Her science and her knowledge and her skills had failed her. She'd been so _sure_...and so horribly _wrong_...

_God, please, let him live...I know I can't ever atone for my sins...but I'll trade my life for this child's, just...please, **please**...don't let him die..._

Haibara Ai had never been the praying sort. Honestly, she'd never felt the need, nor had she much belief in higher powers. She preferred to make her own fate.

But with the life of this child at stake, and nothing she could do to save him--with it all going wrong and she'd caused all of it...really, there was always a first time for everything.

Ai had no idea how long she sat there on the cold bare floor, rocking him, murmuring words that had no meaning, crying silently into his hair. The little body was so hot it seemed she was holding an ember, and his sweat soaked into her clothing as though it were blood. She could not and did not call for help; there was nothing she or any of the others could do.

Nothing but cry, pray, and hope. _Desperately_.

She could not see the sun outside, nor did she look for her clock. Time had no meaning here; she counted it only by each quivering breath he took. In and out...in and out...and as each passed she prayed for the next to come. He still trembled, harsh jerking shivers as if he were freezing, letting her know he was still alive--still holding on, though as he gasped and shook and suffered, she half-wondered if she should pray for his death just so the agony could _end_.

She had barely been able to bear this herself. No child as sweet and innocent as he should have to go through anything like this. This was the nearest thing to walking through Hell itself...

Ai experienced a moment of pure, horrible terror and grief as the little boy's trembling faded, his body growing still at long last--and in that moment, she was certain she had lost him. Lost _everything_.

But in that frantic, frozen moment of panic, the silence cleared the way for the soft sound of one more breath. And as she stared, shock-stilled, at his flushed and sweating face, the blue eyes flickered open, barely, to meet her own.

And all the breath went out of her in a massive heave, relief making her weak and bringing new, different tears to her eyes. The gasping quiver had gone out of his breathing, and the sheen of sweat on his pale, flushed skin was already beginning to dissipate.

She didn't know how long she'd been there with him, but at last an end was in sight. The feverish heat that had rolled off him was fading, and his eyes were open, fixing on hers instead of falling to the glassiness of imminent death. The reaction was passing, whether from science or hope or prayers or the boy's own will to live--at this point, she didn't care. She was immeasurably grateful to whatever it was, and not for a moment did she think of it as her own success.

Yuuichi was going to live.

"Oh...oh, thank you..." she whispered to whatever had saved him, clutching him tight to her once again. "_Thank you_..."

"Ai-neechan...?" said the child, his voice a whispery rasp like a dry leaf.

The familiarity with which he addressed her jolted her with shock. Never, _never_ in her life--in _either_ life--had any child so freely called her thus. Out of the blue, for no reason other than friendship and trust, and even after what she had done to him...

She discovered a third kind of tears in that moment. Three new kinds of tears, in only one day...

"Yuu-chan..." she gasped, still rocking him for no reason she could see but unable to stop. "...I'm so sorry...so sorry...I didn't think...I didn't mean to..."

"'S for Touchan..." he slurred into her shirt, still too slack to move. "Touchan's medicine..."

"That's right, that's right..." she whispered. "But I shouldn't have...I'm so sorry, Yuu-chan...so glad you're okay..."

"Touchan's...sick like this," he said, actually moving his head a little, enough that he could look up at her. "Right? He needs medicine..." The bleary blue eyes began to fall closed, his voice fading. "Ai-neechan...you gotta...make Touchan medicine..."

"Yuuichi...?" She was alarmed for a scant moment before she realized how horribly weary he must be. And after all that, he still hoped for his father, still trusted her to make the cure that was needed.

And seeing his faith, could she do any less?

She remained where she was to hold him as he slept, still sitting there on the floor without a care for her own comfort. She was content just to keep him close in her arms, silent and watchful, in the quiet of her lab. He was completely at peace--completely trusting, his slumbering features touched with neither pain nor restlessness.

She brushed his sweat-tousled bangs gently back from his forehead with her free hand, watching his cherubic face as he breathed easily. It was so like his father's face--a miniature mirror of the solemn, elfin eight-year-old she'd left behind; a sweet, childish echo of the slim, handsome youth she'd seen in pictures, and only once in person.

Gazing at him, holding him like this...it made old heartaches trickle up from their hiding places--things she thought she'd left behind years ago, back when everything had gone so awfully wrong so quickly. Life was strange that way; it was her own actions that had indirectly caused this boy to be brought into the world--meaning thus that it was her own actions that had forever thwarted her from what was, at least back then, her heart's desire.

She had wanted so badly to know love--_his_ love, one man in particular who was trapped in the body of a boy, but whose heart and mind shone through that childish guise like candlelight through colored paper for those who knew to look. Everything he so freely gave to Mouri-chan, Ai had wished that she could have for her own.

And even now, she had to admit to herself that she'd once wished this brilliant, beautiful child was _hers_...

Some part of her still did.

Shinichi had always been able to look through her--to see past the surface, the front she threw up to deflect the approach of others. Those jewel-like blue eyes of his, deep with knowledge that went far beyond his years--she had always been afraid that he would see the feelings she kept hidden. So she teased and snapped and misdirected any time he might have gotten close to figuring it out--at the same time, deep down, wondering why, _why_ was she hiding so much, when she _wanted_ him to know...

But then, as now, there was Mouri Ran. He had already given his heart to her, long before Ai had ever known him. She had lost before she even set foot in his life--doomed to fail before she even tried. So she never _tried_, just hoped and hid, giving him false hopes of a cure to keep him coming back to her, telling him haunting half-truths to frighten him into relying on her--almost too much, so that when _she_ ended up being the one who abandoned _him_, he panicked and floundered and brought everything crashing the rest of the way down...

She'd thought she could at least keep him with her, if she lagged in creating a cure, if she forced him to need her. Because she knew he _didn't_ need her--he had gotten along fine before she came, had already learned far too much about his enemies, had already been offered the hope of a cure from his parents' contacts. He didn't need her--but at least as long as he thought he did, she could be with him...and as long as she didn't ever quite finish a cure to the apotoxin, she could _keep_ him. Mouri Ran would remain forever out of his reach, and maybe someday he would...he would...

He would wait for Ran until the sky fell, until the stars burned out, even if she didn't wait for him in return--he was that strong, he was that faithful, he was that in love...

And Ai knew. She _knew_.

And it was her own choice to run as she had, long ago--run, and leave him in terror, frightened enough to make his mistakes. But it was _their_ love--Kudo-kun and Mouri-chan--that brought about this beautiful accident, this precious child in her arms right now. She might have been the catalyst, but theirs were the hearts and souls that had already been bound together by fate. What had happened then had only been inevitable, merely come to pass sooner than expected--because of her single choice to leave.

Yuuichi had become the living Red Thread that bound those two together for the rest of eternity. And if that whole tangled mess of events four years ago had not taken place, none of this would be possible now--no cure, no hope, with the end closing in and nothing she or any of the others could do. This special child would never have been born, and Shinichi would never be saved.

How had it all come to pass so perfectly? They hadn't known that it took Kudo-kun and Mouri-chan working _together_ to produce a cure--and even if they had considered such a course, she could never have convinced Kudo-kun to go through with it. For a cure to have this kind of price--a child, a life, a sacrifice...he would _never_ have agreed. He would have willingly spent the rest of his days as a child rather than put Ran through what she'd gone through in this.

But somehow, even when they'd all thought everything was falling apart, in truth it was all falling _together_.

Perhaps it _did_ take the hand of God to make everything turn out okay like this. And if that was the case, she hoped He was willing to put His hand out over them for just a little bit longer, to see them all through to the end.

And not even for her own sake. Just for Kudo-kun and Mouri-chan...and this precious, precious little boy...

The door to her lab opened, startling her to full wakefulness after who-knows-how-long spent in half-sleep and thought. She knew who it was, though, as her heartbeat calmed itself once more; only one among the men in her company had the courage and temerity to barge into her laboratory without so much as a knock.

"What is it, Akai?" she asked quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping child, fighting down a flash of embarassment at being caught thus, and in such a state. But he didn't comment one way or another.

"We have a problem," Akai said, his voice terse and solemn. "Iori just called in--Mouri Ran left the Agency on her own."

"_What?_" Ai jerked around, earning a faint stir from the boy in her lap.

"He reports she's on foot, and she's alone--apparently fed up with waiting and gone out to look for the kid," he told her, his eyes hard.

_No--not now--I can't lose any of them now--not when we're so close--_ "Go get her."

His eyebrow twitched, just barely. "You're serious?"

"We don't have a choice," she shot back, her tone harsh with worry. "We can't give them a hostage. And I won't let Mouri-chan fall victim to any of this--go get her and bring her here, as quickly as you can. She would have found out anyway, eventually. She'll be safer here."

"What about Edogawa?"

"Do any of you know where he is? He'll have to take care of himself," she replied, her eyes flashing faintly amused for an instant. "He's capable enough to stay out of their way. And he's got at least one angel looking out for him tonight--a very special angel, with black-feathered wings..."

"I understand." With that, Akai turned to leave, and do as he was bid.

"Wait," she called after him, making him put his head back in the door. "On your way out, tell one of the men to bring a cot in here. Yuuichi-kun needs to sleep, and I need to get back to work. I _have_ to get that cure made before it's too late."

"Got it."

What had already been set in motion was beginning to turn faster. She only hoped it didn't spin completely out of control--not until everything was in place, and she had saved the one man who had a chance of stopping it.

_to be continued_


	7. Part 6: Fighting This

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_When your education x-ray  
Cannot see under my skin,  
I won't tell you a damn thing  
That I could not tell my friends.  
Roaming through this darkness  
I'm alive but I'm alone.  
Part of me is fighting this,  
But part of me is gone.  
_--3 Doors Down, "When I'm Gone"

**Part 6: Fighting This**

Kogoro and Eri were sitting anxiously in the living room when the door burst open, startling them both to their feet.

Sweaty and disheveled, scuffed and scraped and dirty, Edogawa Conan stumbled in the door, dropping coat and skateboard as he stepped inside, panting heavily. His eyes were almost feverishly bright, yet strangely washed-out, his face flushed with exertion yet incredibly pale. He looked like a ghost of himself, and hardly _like_ himself, leaning against the doorframe in utter weariness without ever quite relaxing.

"Conan-kun--!" Shocked at his condition, Eri stepped closer to him, reaching out. "What _happened_ to you? Where on earth have you been? Ran's been worried absolutely sick, and--"

"Where's...Ran?" he gasped, pushing her concerned hands away. "Where is she?"

"She left," Kogoro reported, coming up behind his wife. "Almost fifteen minutes ago."

The fever in Conan's eyes only brightened, and his teeth clenched. "_Shit_."

The anger and hopelessness in his curse shocked both of them far too much to scold him for it. They were both too startled to say much at all; it was almost as if there was something _wrong_ with him--as if there was really something else inside the skin of the boy they knew, straining his seams, struggling to burst out. And who could tell if it was something good...or bad?

With what shone in his strange eyes right now, the subconscious began to speculate if that something was even human at all. And on some level, that frightened them far too much to even _think_ of.

"Any word?" he grated, the harshness of his voice making both adults draw back. "Well? _Anything?_"

"N-no..." Kogoro managed, after clearing his throat. "Inspector Megure has called once or twice to say no one's seen Yuuichi-kun, but..."

"_Damn_ it!" Conan hissed, his fist striking the wall with a solid _whack!_ that made the others jump. "I can't lose them..."

"Conan-kun..." Eri spoke up softly, worriedly. "Just...just come in for a while...you need to _rest_...just come sit down, and eat something, please..." _Just turn back into the Conan-kun we know...!_

"_No_."

Eri tried reaching out again, but found herself held back by her own fear. What lay hidden in his eyes _frightened_ her, whatever it was--rage, weariness, hatred, grief, murder--and it was as if an invisible wall had formed that her own body refused to pass. She couldn't make herself get within his arms' reach.

So instead, she drew back, and Kogoro put his arms around her almost defensively as they stared at the boy who stood against their wall. He stared back at them, the depthless fires in his eyes bared for them to see, and they felt as if a stranger had stepped into their home.

This was not Edogawa Conan. This was not the quiet, polite, gentle boy they knew.

_Who are you?_ was the question at the very tip of her tongue when Conan pushed up from the wall, making Eri bite back her words with a tiny gasp.

"I'm going to find them," he stated, leaving his jacket and skateboard on the floor. He turned to leave, walking out and down the steps.

Something else in his eyes made Eri feel suddenly as if he was walking to his death. As if she'd never see him again--as if _none_ of them would ever see him again. She lurched out of her husband's arms to go after him, calling out to him, Kogoro right on her heels. "Conan-kun--Conan-kun, _no--!_"

Halfway down the steps, he stopped to look back. His gaze made her freeze in her tracks, right there outside the door, and Kogoro nearly bowled into her. She couldn't speak--neither of them could speak, but they only stared at him, like they had before.

His eyes shifted _again_. Something softened, becoming caring, almost tender, mixed in with the anger and the fear and the terrifying death that had been there before. "Stay here," he told them, quietly, as irrevocable as a command. "Stay safe. I _will_ find them."

And as he turned and continued walking--out of their lives, for all they knew--Eri once more fell back into her husband's arms, clinging to him this time, as they both silently watched the young boy leave.

* * *

Yuuichi awoke when the men brought the cot in, despite their painstaking efforts to be quiet. The little boy watched them with bleary eyes from the shelter of Ai's arms, and each of the hardened operatives frowned worriedly when they saw the pale, wearied condition the once-vibrant child was in.

And since he was awake, and she had to finish what she'd started, Ai let him sit on the cot as she conducted another physical, running the same tests she'd run beforehand. Yuuichi was tired and still sleepy from his nap in her arms, yawning hugely when he tried to take deep breaths for her stethoscope--but he remained cooperative and uncomplaining throughout, even when she had to poke him in the other arm for even more blood samples.

These post-reaction tests were the most important of all--she needed the same number of vials again, for the same tests, both to see what had changed and to extract the elements of the cure that she needed. She was so close she could _feel_ it, and had to keep her hands from shaking. Just a little more, and she would have a cure for Kudo-kun at long last.

It excited the boy to hear that his mother would be coming soon. Though wearied from his reaction to the toxin, knowing that Mouri-chan was on her way was enough to brighten his eyes and bring a smile to his face.

Since it was growing late and he was tired anyway, she gave him a large glass of water to drink and put him to bed in the cot--despite his reluctance to go to sleep now that Kaachan was coming. Though he was excited, he still yawned and blinked sleepily as Ai tucked him in under a thin military-issue blanket, promising to wake him the moment his mother arrived. The pillow was soft, and the little boy nodded off almost before he could mumble a reply.

The lab did not remain silent for long; the hum and murmur of instruments and machines filling the air with quiet, steady noise. But Yuuichi did not stir at the sounds, and Ai began her work in earnest, once more testing the samples of blood and cells for the slightest change.

It was absolutely _astounding_. Again, the apotoxin had almost literally vanished--there wasn't a trace of whole-form or reacted molecular chains anywhere. Yuuichi's cells had depleted some of their fuel stores, showing that the body had gone through a period of stress, but nothing had reached detrimental levels. His telomeres were in perfect shape, his body tired but healthy and on the lookout for any other signs of the apotoxin. His cells had indeed metabolized the toxin's chemicals, adding them to the stores of harmless, inert little fragments in their hidden corners--only more stacks of elements to be built around and built upon.

His body had literally _recycled_ the apotoxin, breaking it down and filtering it into the same harmless little molecules that he had already lived with all his life. _Harmless_ molecules, that any ordinary human could live a perfectly normal life with--so long as their body would only store, and _not_ touch, those potentially-dangerous fragments.

Herein was the crux of the problem--and the key to the cure. Ai started to smile faintly as she began piecing together the increasingly-simple puzzle before her, growing ever more eager to see it _done_. She had here the final ingredients, the perfect tools...and all that remained would be to see if she could, at last, use all her gifts wisely.

* * *

Part of Mouri Ran's mind--the sensible, practical, adult part--realized that leaving the Mouri Detective Agency after dark and all alone was probably not a good idea. It also realized that she, by herself and on foot, going up and down the streets of Beika, was fairly silly and if Conan-kun--who had been all over hither and yon on his skateboard--couldn't find Yuuichi, she wasn't likely to either.

But the sensible part of Ran's mind was massively dwarfed by the frantic, frightened, determined mother part. _This_ part didn't care how late it was, how dark it was, how silly it was, or how alone she was--it only cared about her son, and finding him no matter what it took.

She couldn't bear to sit still any longer--couldn't stand just waiting there at home doing nothing, when it was getting dark and cold and Yuuichi was still out there somewhere. It was still so cool at night, and Yuuichi's coat had been left at the school; she had it with her, to give it to him when she found him--she didn't want him to be cold. And so here she was, hurrying down yet another street with a flashlight in her other hand, calling out for Yuuichi and crying as she did.

She had started crying about ten minutes ago, as she ran up and down streets realizing how horribly _futile_ it all was...

But still, she had to try. She _had_ to. Her whole being was bound up in finding her son--her very soul would not let her sit still.

As wrapped up as she was in walking and searching and calling, she did not notice who followed her. She did not see the man in dark clothing walking not ten meters behind her, growing closer. She did not hear his silent approach as she stopped on an empty corner beneath the streetlight, looking left and right and wondering where she could go next.

But he was seen by no less than three others--one, who watched the follower, the shadow, and the one who approached all at once; another, who had followed her from the very beginning; and a third, right now on his way to save her.

The one who watched all three saw the shadow prepare to make a move and withdrew further into the darkness, waiting.

The shadow saw the follower walk up behind Ran and broke cover to come to her rescue, already spotting the knife in the dark stranger's hand.

The one on his way to save her pulled up at the street corner in a rumble of engine and a screech of stressed brakes, making Ran gasp and leap away from the curb.

Then everything happened all at once.

The follower in black made a lurching grab at Ran; her withdrawal from the screeching car had turned her to the side and she caught his motion in the corner of her eye. Years of karate training, only slightly rusty with disuse, reacted automatically to the arms coming her way; she dropped the coat and flashlight, ducked and turned and struck out, and a weapon fell away to the concrete with metallic clatter, accompanied by a man's harsh hissing curse of angry surprise.

The one who had pulled up in the car had already leaped out and was rushing at her assailant, catching him in a tackle that slammed both of them into the side of the building behind her. With a startled shriek, Ran stumbled aside of the confrontation, shocked and panicked at the sudden nature of this madness. In the scant instants it took to try to decide whether or not to flee, another man had approached her from the other side, trapping her between the confrontation and the newcomer.

Frightened but determined, Ran set herself into a karate stance, ready to go down fighting. But to her surprise, the nondescriptly-dressed stranger held up his hands, speaking tersely but politely. "We're not here to hurt you, Mouri-san."

Stubbornly remaining as she was, Ran glared at him, confused and suspicious. Behind her, the man from the car had subdued the man in the black coat, holding him face-down on the sidewalk with a knee in his back and one arm twisted up behind. "Iori," he grunted, leaning harder on the struggling captive. "Come take this bastard for me. I've got my orders."

"Righto, Akai-san," said the one named Iori. He paused to offer a faint smile at Ran. "Nice finally talking to you, Mouri-san. Don't worry, you're safe now."

"Who are you?" Ran demanded, facing both of them though her knees quivered to back away.

"Akai-san" had hauled the bruised captive to his feet, one arm still twisted behind, and handed him off to Iori, who merely slammed the prisoner to the building wall instead of the concrete. Panting slightly, Akai turned to her, the intensity of his dark gaze making her step back from him.

"_You!_" she whispered, eyes widening in shocked recognition. "Who are you?"

"That man--" Akai jerked his chin at the captive. "--was sent to kill or kidnap you. I was sent to bring you back to our current base of operations for your own safety. And to reunite you with your son."

The change was instantaneous. "_Yuuichi?_" Ran gasped, tears flooding her eyes suddenly. "Where is he? What have you done with him? You give him back to me _now_ or I'll--!"

"Mouri-san, please," Akai said, breaking into her rush of words with an impatient tone and a half-raised hand. "It was for his safety. We took the boy into our custody so the same thing wouldn't happen to him. If you'll come with me, I'll take you to where he is now."

The two parts of Ran were at war again. Her mind was still swirling, too shocked to process the attack yet--how close she had come to life-or-death danger--and too startled from seeing this enigmatic man's face again. The sensible part knew much better than to get into a car with a stranger, especially one like _this_--this dangerous, shadowy man she had seen several times before, _always_ in such suspicious and troubled times. The mother part said to go with him now, and get her son back, and heaven help whoever might have hurt him--even this cold-eyed semi-stranger.

As usual, the mother part won.

"Take me there!" she commanded tearfully. "And while you're taking me you're going to explain why you kidnapped him!"

Akai glanced at the other man, still holding the prisoner. "Iori. You know what to do with him."

Iori nodded, with a grim smile. "That I do, sir. Consider it done."

The captive black-dressed man gulped loudly.

Akai turned back to Ran, gesturing to his car. "Get in. I can't tell you everything, but I'll tell you what I can."

Silent, Ran picked up Yuuichi's small coat from where it had fallen, gingerly sliding into the back seat of the car when Akai opened the door. She remained silent as he got in and started the car, the jacket clutched tight in her hands, glaring at the back of his head as she waited for him to start explaining.

As the car pulled away, leaving Iori with the captive Black agent, the shadowiest of shadows began to follow.

_to be continued_


	8. Part 7: Trying Hard To Breathe

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_I'm not supposed to be scared of anything,  
But I don't know where I am.  
I wish that I could move but I'm exhausted,  
And nobody understands how I feel.  
I'm trying hard to breathe now,  
But there's no air in my lungs.  
There's no one here to talk to,  
And the pain inside is making me numb.  
Try to hold this under control;  
You can't help me 'cause no one knows.  
_--3 Doors Down, "Changes"

**Part 7: Trying Hard To Breathe**

Even his trusty skateboard had failed him. And without it, Conan was left on foot, running, wondering what he was doing and what the hell he was _supposed_ to do. Leaving the Agency forty-five minutes ago hadn't even gotten him as far as he'd once ranged with his skateboard to carry him, and he was wearing himself down step by step, but unable to stop.

_Frantic_ didn't even begin to describe his state of mind. _White-hot_ was coming closer--seething and raging and frenzied and gasping as he ran/stumbled along, lungs burning and limbs shaking, but still _searching_.

He was a _detective_. If he stopped searching it would mean he was giving up, and he would not--_could not_ give up hope of finding his son, and finding Ran. If he gave up, he would shatter.

With both of them gone, the jagged ache inside him had only doubled in size and intensity. Now he was just running aimlessly, mindlessly, no longer logical and ordered but terrified and despairing--determined to find them somehow. Hope had long since given way to desperation, resolve had faded to grief, but a horrible sadness and anger kept his feet moving, one after another.

He'd spent this whole wretched day searching, knowing who could have already--who had _probably_ already taken his son from him. Knowing all this time that Yuuichi could be forever lost to him, or even _dead_...but his mind's abject refusal to _stop_ kept him rushing ahead, knowing that if he gave up he really would fall to pieces like broken glass.

And he _couldn't find them_. No matter how hard he tried or how long he looked, the city was too big. There were too many places to hide. He was all alone, one young boy running around on foot or on a silly skateboard, trying to find one missing preschooler--and now, one missing young woman...

But he just couldn't stop. Grief and rage and a cold deadly _will_ made him keep running, far beyond the point of caring how tired or hungry or hurt he was. Seething fury at the Black Organization had torn his masks aside, stripping the everyday innocence of the young-boy face down to something ghastly and pale and terrifyingly sharp, icy eyes brimming with fell, feverish flames.

He had seen how frightened the Mouris had been, there at the office. He had known that his Conan-mask had slipped away--long gone, by then. But he could not bring himself to care who they were seeing, even if their expressions had seemed as though they were staring into the face of death itself.

They might not be far wrong. At this point, the cold glittering fire inside him made him unsure what he might do, if he found one of _them_...

He really wasn't Conan any more. He couldn't be. He wasn't even sure who he was now--nothing, nobody...the child-faced, nameless, vengeful ghost of Kudo Shinichi.

Right now, he had to find them--Ran and Yuuichi, somehow he would...even if he had to go hunt down that thrice-cursed teacher and wring it out of her, he would if he had to--he would do _anything_ to find them, to save them, even give his life if that's what it took.

_I have to find them,_ his mind repeated, over and over, a litany that kept the rhythm of his feet, that turned in his head like an engine that kept him going. _Can't live without Ran...can't lose Yuuichi--God, I'll die without them...got to find them somehow...I have to...I **have** to...!_

Something caught his foot, and he stumbled; his weakened limbs couldn't catch him before he fell, barely slowing his descent so that he tumbled to his knees with a harsh cry. Pain in his stung palms and knees brought him more awake than he had been, jogging mindlessly--but it only served to hurt and frustrate him more when his shaking legs almost refused to stand him up again.

"I can't stop," he hissed at himself. "Get up, coward..."

_Coward--weakling--fool!_ his mind raged at him, as he gasped for air there on the sidewalk. _You ruin Ran's life, keep her in constant danger, hide from her and lie to her--and your own son--and you can't even get your pathetic ass off the ground and help her when she needs you?_

"I'm _trying_," he snarled back at his conscience. "Where do I go? What the hell do I _do--?_"

His harsh statement was accompanied by a fist thumped to the concrete, followed by one tiny drop of water. Gritted teeth tried to bite back tears--tears of terror and grief and frustration and rage and utter, hopeless agony.

_What do I do?_ he cried silently in his heart. _What else can I do? Where else can I go? It's all over...I've lost them...God, what am I supposed to do?_

In the state he was in, the faint ringing of the telephone in his pocket both scared the living daylights out of him and made his heart leap with a surge of sudden, irrational hope.

He reared back on his knees to fumble the unit out of his pocket, not even bothering with the remote earphone but simply unfolding the handset and putting it to his ear. "What is it? Agasa? Are they found?" he demanded in rapid succession, his mind barely considering the scant handful of people who had this number.

"Hello to you, too," said a soft, familiar voice--one that was like a dash of cold water over him, jerking him abruptly out of the haze.

"_You--!_" he gasped.

"Well, are you still working yourself into a tizzy, or have you stopped running in circles long enough to listen?" the voice went on, wryly. "It's a pretty nice night, if you still feel like continuing your evening jog..."

"Kuroba!" Conan half-choked. "What do you know about this?"

Kuroba Kaito chuckled softly on the other end. "You'd be surprised, Kudo. It's kind of hard to miss what's going on when half the city police force turns out to find one kid. Thought I'd lend a hand."

"You...you found something..." It was not a question--the young thief would not be calling without a damn good reason.

"I've been keeping an eye out, and when your girlfriend left home tonight I followed her," Kaito replied. "I know where she is now, and it seems she's safe. I'm sure the kid's there, too. But I won't say where over the phone--too risky. Meet me at Tokyo Tower--I'll be making my way there."

"But--you--!"

"Just be there, Kudo. And fast," Kaito said, his voice more serious than usual by far. "Something _major_ is about to happen. _Hurry_."

With that, the line went dead.

Conan stared at the phone for several seconds, as his heartbeat roared in his ears and his vision swam with the beginnings of tears--this time of sheer relief.

They were _found_. Someone had found them--and thank God it was someone he could trust.

Even if it felt weird to be saying that of a thief and a criminal...really, he was going to owe Kuroba even more for this. A thousand times more than before--and he would pay him back in full for everything, with interest, in any way he could...when it was all over and Ran and Yuuichi were with him again...

He forced himself to his feet, buoyed by new, stumbling hope, and began to make his way toward Tokyo Tower.

* * *

Ran had calmed down considerably--though she was no less wary--by the time Akai Shuichi drove her to her destination. His brief, terse explanations of today's events had set her a bit at ease--and frightened her even more to hear that some shadowy, yakuza-like syndicate had been planning to kidnap her son. And Akai's associates couldn't warn her about it; phones might have been listened to, and sending one of their agents to meet with her would be far too risky--so they'd had to make Yuuichi "disappear" without word to anyone, whisking him away to a safe location.

And as for _why_ that syndicate was after her child...well, it wasn't exactly a _secret_ that Yuuichi was Kudo Shinichi's son. And Ran had already begun to wonder if the syndicate had connections with the Mafia groups or terrorists that Shinichi was fighting in America...

But the thought of finally seeing her son filled her with anticipation and adrenaline, setting her on an anxious edge so that she couldn't wait to arrive at their destination. Her hands were white-knuckled on the small jacket in her lap as Akai pulled through the warehouse lots. When the car finally stopped, she almost _leaped_ out of it, almost making herself stumble in her overbearing _hurry_ to get to Yuuichi.

"Calm down," Akai told her in a steadying voice, though he looked a bit exasperated with her unreasoning desperation to reach her son _now_. "I've told you he's safe."

"Just--just take me to him," Ran commanded, fighting back tears of mixed relief, frustration, fear, and gladness. "Please."

Akai was already pulling keys out of his pocket to unlock the door of the building they had stopped at. "Follow me," was all he said in response.

Meanwhile, on the inside of the headquarters, Yakamoto had been radioed the moment Akai's car had passed through their perimeter guard--eliciting a flurry of activity from the men around him, as they hurried to elect a brave soul to go knock on Haibara's door to tell her. Hiroshi had finally volunteered, and with a hesitant gulp had gone to inform their resident scientist that Akai was back with Mouri Ran.

And the moment Ai heard, she carefully put her research on pause--taking several minutes to disengage at a safe point--and went to wake her sleeping charge.

"Yuuichi-kun..." She nudged him softly, making him shift and stir. "Yuuichi-kun, wake up. Your mother is here...let's go meet her."

Sleepy blue eyes crept open, then blinked at her. "Kaachan's here...?" yawned the little voice.

"That's right--she's coming in right now," Ai answered, trying on a faint smile. "You want to go say hello, don't you?"

"Yeah..." Yuuichi sat up with a mighty stretch, making an effort to pull himself awake.

Ai helped him out of the cot and held his hand to steady him as he yawned and blinked sleepily; had she been Miyano Shiho again she might have carried him, but he was a bit heavy for her now. She led him to the door and opened it--and when she did, she could hear Mouri-chan downstairs, frantic and worried and tearful, asking for him, coming closer.

Yuuichi perked up almost immediately upon hearing her voice. "Kaachan!"

"_Yuuichi?_" As she hurried up the stairs, Ran's knees almost gave out in relief as she heard the little boy somewhere ahead. She ran faster, rounding the corner at the top of the stairs and nearly falling into the strange office/secret base set up on the second floor--but her eyes hardly saw it, her brain didn't register it. She didn't see the room; she didn't see the handful of wary, worried-looking men all around--she only saw Yuuichi, coming across the room hand-in-hand with a young girl who was so familiar Ran knew she should recognize her but her mind couldn't spare the thoughts to try. "_Yuuichi--!_"

The girl released him and with a brilliant smile Yuuichi trotted toward her--even as Ran sprint-stumbled to reach him, dropping the small jacket, falling to her knees to catch him up in a desperate embrace, already sobbing and holding him and kissing him and overjoyed to see him and touch him and know that he was _alive_, he was _okay_, he was _in her arms again_...

"...Yuu-chan, my Yuu-chan, you're here...!" she cried, petting his hair and rocking him as she sobbed with relief. "...thought I'd lost you...my baby...so glad you're alright...you're okay...!"

Ai could only watch them, silent, her features an emotionless mask and her eyes glittering deeply with tears she would not shed. She briefly met Akai's gaze, where he stood at the top of the stairs, and he nodded faintly at her with such a strange expression hidden in his eyes that she had to look down again. Around them, Yakamoto-san and the others looked on uncomfortably, unsure of what to do with the sobbing young woman in the middle of their floor.

For his part, Yuuichi was very glad to see his mother, but not quite sure why she was crying so. His smile went away as he hugged her, trying to comfort her in return; it worried him that she was so upset, so he remained still and let her hold him, like he let Niichan hold him sometimes when the older boy went all quiet and sad and strange...

As Ran's sobs began to subside, she gradually became aware of her surroundings--all the things she'd been unable to see before. Still holding her son tight, she looked up at the blank-faced young girl standing nearest to them, frowning a little as recognition struggled to surface. "You...you're..." Her voice was rough with tears that were slow to subside, but she sniffled and tried to go on as surprise began to paint her features. "You can't be...Haibara-chan...?"

With a breath, Ai nodded, finding herself somehow fearful of recognition--though Mouri-chan had nothing to suspect her for, nothing to blame her for, not like Kudo-kun... "Hello, Mouri-chan. It's been a long time."

Staring wide-eyed now, especially at the way Ai addressed her, Ran settled Yuuichi to a more comfortable position on her lap and glanced around at the men. "But...what are you doing _here_...with all this...this...?"

"It's a long story," Ai replied, her face still as blank as Ran could ever remember. "One of you--get Mouri-chan a chair, would you?" she directed at the soldiers around them. "Quit gawking like tourists and be polite!"

Her snapped order sent the men into a brief skitter as Daisuke dived to bring a chair around to Ran and Mamoru stepped up to offer her a hand to her feet, all of them mumbling apologies and hasty welcomes. Clearly, they were not accustomed to visitors in their secret location.

What shocked Ran the most was not accepting a hand up from a man dressed in black fatigues, nor was it being offered a chair by yet another black-dressed soldier--it was the manner in which all these men hustled to obey one young girl's order as if she were a hardened battle commander. She would have expected it if someone like Akai had given the order--but not Haibara-chan...

Not Haibara-chan, the little girl she'd known--who had been missing for four years now, gone back home to America or back to family as far as Ran knew...

She had already figured out there was a lot going on she didn't know about. Now she was beginning to wonder just how deep all this went.

"Don't worry, Kaachan," Yuuichi spoke up from her lap, as she sat rather numbly in the chair. "They're all my friends. We even played _games_. Don't worry!"

"Yuu-chan..." she murmured, looking down at his cheerful but concerned blue eyes.

"He's been safe with us," Ai said, looking down as she spoke. "I'm sorry we had to do this so suddenly--and I'm sorry that it alarmed you so. If there had been a better way..."

Ran's brows drew down; she was angry, behind the fading terror and the tears and the relief and joy. She was _very_ angry that this had happened--yet she could not find the right words to out-and-out _yell_ at Haibara-chan. Aside from being unsure of what was really going on here--and she wasn't so unobservant that she didn't know there was a _lot_ going on here she didn't understand--she did realize that what these people had done might have indeed saved her son's life. She herself had almost been attacked...

But only if it was the truth. Only if it wasn't all arranged--only if there really _was_ an evil syndicate...

"I think...I'd like to take my son and go home now," she stated, her voice as even as she could make it through the wobble in her throat from the crying.

Ai looked more uncomfortable, though her face remained blank. "I'm afraid we can't let you leave. At least not yet," she was quick to add. "It's still too dangerous. If you wait for just a little while, Kudo-kun will--"

She broke off suddenly as Ran gasped, almost coming up off the chair. "_Shinichi?_ Is he here? Is he with you people? What has he been doing? Why is he with you? Where is he? Why didn't he _tell_ me...?"

Her last sentence faded off into a sob, as Ai seemed to wince.

Yuuichi looked from Ran to Ai and back again, his small face pinched with definite worry. "Ai-neechan is making medicine for Touchan," he said helpfully, hoping to relieve the tension even he could feel in the air.

"_Medicine?_ What--?" Ran's eyes snapped up to Ai. "What's going on here?"

Ai sighed deeply, closing her eyes as if in great weariness. "All of you..." she spoke to the soldiers. "Out."

There was a mutter of protest that ran through the room--cutting off sharply when Haibara's eyes flashed. "Just go!" she ordered harshly. "Downstairs--outside--I don't care. Take a smoke break. Just go."

With more worried looks, Hiroshi and the others began to file out past Akai. Yakamoto scowled, then took his headphones, a set of radios, and a handful of other things as he rose to leave. "You sure try to make my job difficult, Haibara-kun," he grumbled as he went. Eiji was the last to go, having difficulty leaving his computer for any length of time.

When they were gone, Akai lingered. He gazed at Ai with eyes that were both soft and hard at the same time, somehow looking uncaring and concerned in the same instant. She looked up at him, and shook her head. "You too," she told him quietly.

With one last measuring look, one that lasted several moments, the dark-haired man shrugged and turned to head downstairs with the rest of them.

Ran had remained silent and anxious as all the men left, clutching Yuuichi a little tighter just out of sheer worry--finding herself somehow afraid of the little girl standing there across from her, who watched her with those cool, unreadable eyes.

"Haibara-chan, what's going on?"

Ai took another deep breath, seating herself on another chair next to the one empty table in the room, facing Ran with a face that was less expressionless, more sad. "Edogawa-kun has been looking for Yuuichi this whole time. He's managed to elude the man we assigned to keep an eye on him, and we don't know where he is right now but we've assumed he'll be coming here soon enough. Within a few hours, if not sooner, he'll probably find us."

"Conan-kun?" Ran looked confused. "But he's..."

"And if he can find us, our enemy probably can too--we knew there was risk in doing something this public," Ai went on. "We won't have a lot of time--from now on, every second is going to have to count." She paused, glancing at the little boy in Ran's lap. "Why don't you send Yuuichi to my office for a little while?"

Ran actually started. "But--"

For the first time in their encounter, Ai smiled--but it was faint, barely there, and still so sad. "I'm not sure he needs to hear this, Mouri-chan. What do you say, Yuuichi-kun? Your mother and I need to talk for a bit--can you go to my lab? I'm pretty sure your paper and pencils are still there--you could go finish your drawing."

Oddly serious, Yuuichi nodded, then looked up at Ran. "Kaachan? Can I go?"

Reflexively, her arms tightened. "But...Yuu-chan, you..."

"It's okay, Kaachan," Yuuichi said, already trying to scoot out of her lap. "Ai-neechan needs to talk about _grownup_ stuff. Medicine stuff." He shrugged. "And I wanna finish my picture so I can show you."

Startled and numb, Ran let him go; the little boy plopped to the floor and trotted off, back to the open door across the room where he vanished around the corner. Ran's heart fell the moment he was out of her sight, and she had to fight back an urge to go and snatch him up again.

"He'll be fine, Mouri-chan," Ai said, bringing Ran's attention back to her. "He was hard at work on that picture earlier, and I'm sure it'll be quite the masterpiece--"

"What _is_ this?" Ran burst out, very near to tears again. "What's going on here? Why are you watching Conan-kun? And _me?_ And Yuuichi?" Her breath hitched. "And where's Shinichi?"

"He'll be here soon," Ai told her softly. "Edogawa-kun has to get here before _they_ do, or it's all over--if only I knew where he was..."

Ran swallowed hard. "Haibara-chan..._where is Shinichi?_"

Ai closed her eyes again, her small frame going slack with an awful, lifeless weariness. It seemed as though the weight of the whole world rested upon this one young girl, and with her pale, worry-shadowed face it seemed as though she was horribly _tired_--tired and sad and _afraid_. It was as if her suffering on this day had been no less than Ran's own--and possibly...impossibly...even _more_...

But her next words, spoken in such a small, rough, exhausted voice, made the bottom drop out of _everything_ and filled Ran with a wave of ice-cold, agonized _shock_.

"Mouri-chan...Edogawa-kun _is_ Shinichi."

_--to be continued--_


	9. Part 8: Choosing So Carefully

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_'Cause you're working,  
Building a mystery,  
Holding on and holding it in.  
Yeah, you're working,  
Building a mystery,  
And choosing so carefully.  
_--Sarah McLachlan, "Building A Mystery"

**Part 8: Choosing So Carefully**

It took him a long time to reach Tokyo Tower, even if he'd managed to hop a bus going in that general direction. It didn't carry him all the way there, but it did shave a chunk of distance off the walking he had to do.

Conan was already _beyond_ exhausted. His feet ached and his muscles shook, and he felt terribly cold even though he was sweating profusely from all the exertion of walking, running, jogging through the night streets. He got a lot of strange looks from passersby--a bedraggled, gasping young boy running and stumbling down the sidewalk on a beeline for Tokyo Tower.

Once he got to the base of the huge structure, however, his real problems began. Standing there, staring up at the tower, his arms wrapped around himself against the night chill, he started to feel the edges of frustration and desperation creeping in.

_Great. Just great. **Now** what am I supposed to do?_ he growled silently. _"Meet me at Tokyo Tower," he says. Well, Kuroba, it's a pretty damn big place--so where the hell are you?_

He glanced around at all the people and lights; though it was dark, it still wasn't all that late, and there was still a lot of people and traffic about. _This is way too public for him. He'd never come out to meet me here--what was I thinking? This is too exposed. He's not coming..._

Conan was just beginning to fall into the depths of despair once more when a cooing flutter caught his attention. Startled, he glanced around, catching sight of a pidgeon on the sidewalk beside him--a pidgeon, out and about after dark, in the bright streetlights.

No, not a pidgeon--a _dove_. A plump, moon-white dove with distinct, ash-gray markings on its wings and tail-feathers.

It was hard to breed pure white doves while living as a fugitive. Sometimes the occasional common pidgeon got mixed in.

Conan blinked at the bird, eyebrows going up with recognition. "Well...hello, Kemuri," he said softly, his voice rasped from weariness and thirst--and now, relief.

The white-and-gray dove strutted closer to him, cocking its head to peer up at him with one shiny dark eye. It turned in a circle and cooed at him, regarding him almost impatiently.

Despite his tiredness and depression, Conan managed a faint half-smile. "Follow you, huh? Figures..." He took a step toward the bird; it remained where it was for a second before launching into flight, heading across the street to the top of a lamp-post.

With a bone-weary sigh, Conan unlimbered his arms and followed after the dove, skittering across the street without waiting for a green light. When he reached the lamp-post, the dove fluttered off again, further down the street.

They continued this follow-the-leader game for a while, with Kemuri the dove leading the way and Conan stumbling along behind. They moved in a generally straight line--probably since the bird had been instructed to find a target and return, but pidgeons weren't all that smart--and occasionally Kemuri would flutter back to perch and turn in a circle if Conan fell behind.

Eventually, however, the mottled dove flew down to the sidewalk at the mouth of an alley, stopping there and turning one last circle before regarding Conan with an approving air as he stumbled up, panting. The bird cooed at him softly, unafraid of his proximity, as Conan recovered his breath somewhat and peered into the dark depths of the alleyway. It was further from Tokyo Tower and the street around them was quiet and empty.

In fact, it was so quiet for a moment that the flutter of Kemuri's wings startled him as the dove took wing once more, vanishing over the top of the adjacent building.

Wary, and a bit confused, Conan stepped forward into the alley, looking up at the building the bird had vanished over. _Now what? Is he up there? Then there has to be a fire-escape ladder somewhere--he **knows** I can't get up there any other way like this..._

Then he got the feeling. There were _eyes_ on him.

He passed into the shadows where the streetlights couldn't reach, his steps slow and deliberate to allow his eyes time to adjust as he walked further into the depths. There was almost no direct light here, but as his eyes quickly grew accustomed to the dimness he could make out dumpsters and fluttering bits of trash--and further down, the wall of a building. A blind alley, then.

_He wouldn't just let himself be cornered..._

There was a faint breeze through the alleyway, just enough to make him shiver. All around him were piles of trash and junk, above were the shadows of the fire-escape he'd sought, but there was no one here. Or at least no one immediately apparent.

The _watched_ feeling was growing intense, making every hair on his body stand on end and his spine tingle with alertness. An edge of adrenaline drowned some of his exhaustion, making him stand a bit straighter there in the darkness.

And even as his body reacted, his mind banished the alarms--he already knew who was watching him. He knew who, and why, and _where_.

"'If I was one of _them_, I'd have killed you a dozen times by now,'" he quoted into the dimness around him--and with a low sigh, he turned keen eyes directly toward a window nook about twelve feet up, a little ways down the wall. "Right, Kuroba?"

"Sharp as ever, I see," replied the soft, ironic voice of the thief, as a shadow shifted in that spot--a dark shape that was invisible until it moved. "Can't hide from you at all. And you took the words right out of my mouth."

"I don't have time for games." Conan took a few steps closer, gazing up at the darkly-dressed form curled into the recess of one of the building's small back windows. "You said meet at Tokyo Tower, and I followed your bird all the way here..."

"Ah yes, Kemuri...I thought she would be a good choice. You'd recognize her--and she likes you, besides."

Conan's eyes narrowed--not with real anger, but impatience. "I'm flattered. So tell me what you know. Where's Ran? And Yuuichi?"

"Safe, at least I think," Kuroba Kaito replied, before leaning out and leaping down from the window nook to land easily on the alley floor. He remained where he'd landed, two meters from Conan and not offering to approach any closer.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Conan demanded. He'd long since lost his wariness of the thief, but long habit made him keep the silent mutual agreement on space.

"Don't flip your lid on me, Kudo," Kaito warned, not unkindly. "I'm gonna tell you some stuff, but you've got to keep your cool. _This_--" He gestured at Conan's bedraggled, exhausted, emotional state. "--isn't like you at all."

"I'm _fine_," the boy almost growled. "You said you know where Ran is."

"Yes, I do." Kaito put his hands in the pockets of his long dark coat and fixed Conan with a firm stare. "She was picked up by a man in a car and taken across town to an old warehouse district. I wrote down the address--"

Conan had already switched modes--directly into panic. "She was _what?_ A man in a car? Who--?"

"_Stop_, Kudo," Kaito interrupted, the unusually urgent tones in his voice halting the boy's babble like a brick wall. "I told you not to flip out. I think she's safe with them, at least for now. They've been following her most of the day, I'd guess--"

"_What?_"

"--but listen, it's not _Them_--not the ones we're after. If I'm not mistaken, it's another bunch--a rival group, I think. I haven't heard much about them, since they're just as tight on secrets, but--hell, this isn't the time for long explanations. I don't know if we're okay, or if we've just jumped from the frying pan and into an even worse inferno."

Kaito's voice became even more serious, so abruptly it startled Conan. "What happened?" he asked, on edge and already trembling with anxiety.

"When Ran took off on her own, one of the Black bastards made a grab for her, but the new guys nailed him before he could get her," Kaito informed him. "That's when they took her, and I followed. I found out where they're at, and they've probably got Yuuichi in there too. So they're alive for now...but I don't want to see them made into bargaining chips in some gang war between the Blacks and these new guys. We don't have much time before something major breaks loose."

"You mean _I_ don't have much time," Conan stated, his eyes already bleak. "I have to get there. Where is it? You have the address?"

"You're not gonna like this," Kaito replied, almost apologetically. "It's halfway across Tokyo, in the big industrial storage district to the south."

Conan's jaw dropped--and so did his heart, all the way to the pit of his stomach. "But...no...! How am I supposed to get _there_...from here...? And I'm running out of time...!"

Kaito actually smiled a little. "Didn't you call your old pal, Hattori?" he asked, half-teasing. "I think he could arrange to give you a lift."

"Hattori--!" The boy blinked, nearly smacking himself in the forehead. "I completely forgot--he's on his way here--"

"Precisely." After a thoughtful pause, in which Kaito regarded Conan with measuring eyes, the thief took several slow, careful steps forward--as one of the hands in his pockets withdrew, holding out a small slip of paper. "Here's the address, Kudo. You can take the freeway southeast, and get off at the exit where a canal passes a factory with three red smokestacks. The rest is written here."

Conan stared at the paper for a half-instant before taking it, carefully, his small fingers barely brushing the hand of the thief. He read the information over briefly, then looked up at Kaito, who had taken a step back. "I...I...thank you..." he stuttered, gratitude tightening his throat. "I really...can't say enough..."

"So don't worry about it," Kaito replied with a shrug.

"But--doing this..." Conan still stared up at him, eyes large in his pale, tired face. "Why? You could put yourself in danger...if they saw you--if they knew...you'd be at risk, and so would..."

Again, Kaito shrugged, glancing away for only an instant. "You'd do the same for me. At least, that's what I'd like to think."

"You should know me by now," Conan replied quickly, with sudden earnestness.

"That I should," Kaito answered with a smile. "And I do. That's why I think so."

"Kuroba...I...back then--"

Kaito shook his head. "_Don't_, Kudo. It wasn't your fault. I knew the risks, and I made my choice."

"But if I hadn't--"

"Look, just shut up," Kaito stated, his voice firm but in no way harsh, waving a dismissive hand. "I'm tired of telling you it wasn't your fault, so just stop. You don't have time--get your ass moving!"

Conan took a step backward, more surprised at the absolute _lack_ of animosity in the youth than with being told he wasn't held to blame. Kuroba had said so before, many times, and even then he was never _angry_, never _resentful_, never _bitter_ toward Conan at all. "But--what about--?"

"You're not alone in this, Kudo," Kaito replied, with a shadow of his old cocky grin. "I think the Black bastards are in for more than a few surprises tonight." He regarded Conan impatiently for a moment. "What are you still standing here for, baka? Get going! Hurry, before I kick your skinny butt myself! Go!"

The sudden look of _danger_--as well as two threatening steps toward the boy--caused Conan to yelp and shy back, surprised at the thief's lunge and reacting automatically to avoid being touched. Startled, he skittered toward the mouth of the alley like a spooked colt, stopping to look back only when he had reached the edge of light and darkness.

When he looked back, Kaito had not moved any further--but was instead grinning at him. Only briefly, though; with a jaunty wave and a leap, the thief caught hold of the fire escape ladder and flipped himself up, returning to the rooftops he'd descended from.

Conan didn't stay to watch him go. With an instants-long, wry smile, he whirled and began to run down the sidewalk, back in the direction he'd come. Above his head, a white-and-gray dove swooped low over him with a soft coo, as if to encourage him, before turning upwards, back to the height of the buildings--back to her master's side.

As if the knowledge of Ran's whereabouts had rejuvenated him, Conan sped back toward Tokyo Tower as if he were fresh and unexhausted. As he ran, he fished his phone from his pocket and hit one of the speed-dial buttons.

Again, it rang _forever_. He was almost back to the Tower when the other end finally picked up.

"Hattori here. Who the _hell_ is jangling my phone in the middle of--?"

"Hattori! Where are you?" Conan demanded breathlessly.

"Kudo? What--?"

"Where are you right now?"

"Jeeze, I'm on my way to Beika right now--what are you--?"

"So you're in Tokyo?" Conan broke in urgently.

"Hell yeah. I'm about fifteen minutes out, if you'll wait a sec--"

"Fifteen minutes? What? Are you in a car?" he asked, his voice sharp and quick as he came back into the lights of the Tower.

"No!" Heiji snorted. "I didn't want to wait for buses or trains so I rented a motorcycle just outside the airport when I got here. That's why it took me so long to--"

"That's _perfect!_" Conan blurted, almost grinning for sheer elation. "Stop--turn around--whatever--just don't go to Beika! Come here and meet me at Tokyo Tower. I'll be--" He paused and glanced up. "I'll be at the south corner of it. _Right there_."

"Can I _ever_ finish a sentence?" Heiji groused. "And what are you doing at--?"

"I'll explain everything on the way. Just _get here!_" Conan ordered, his voice harsh and urgent. "I'll see you then!"

Without waiting for a response, he shut the phone off and kept running. Even if his legs cramped and his lungs burned, he barely felt it--he was going to find Ran and Yuuichi, and that was all that mattered to him.

* * *

It was sometimes odd, Haibara Ai observed, how some people handled shock. Some closed up, or grew angry, or immediately denied all. Others burst into sobs, or began to scream and cry, or even fainted.

Mouri Ran seemed to do none of these, yet her reaction encompassed several. Clinically, it was interesting to watch--but for Ai, it was painful, knowing what had to be pouring through the young woman's mind.

First, Ran grew terribly, tremblingly still, her features draining of all color. Then she began to shake her head, tears already welling up to spill from her eyes. Her mouth worked, soundless for long moments as if she was fighting with her own throat for control of her words.

"No..._no_...you're _wrong_, Haibara-chan..." she finally managed, denial spilling forth in soft croaking tones. "He's not...I _know_ he's not, I've _seen_ him...Conan-kun is _Conan-kun_...I've seen them both--I've seen _him_, and he told me..."

Ai shook her head as well, but it was only a brief, negatory gesture as she pinned Ran's gaze with her own. "It was a lie."

A sob cut through Ran's silence--only one sob, as if the word "lie" was a hot poker jabbing her in the heart. "He wouldn't--he _wouldn't_--you don't _know_--"

"I _do_ know, Mouri-chan," Ai interrupted, unable to hide the pain inside; it was leaking out through her eyes, making her gaze glisten. It was touching her face, pinching her features. "I'm one of the few who knows everything about this."

"But...he _can't_ be..." Mouri-chan repeated brokenly, and Ai saw her eyes flick beyond her, to the room where Yuuichi was playing quietly. "He couldn't..._he couldn't...!_"

"He _is_, Mouri-chan," Ai stated quietly, trying to keep herself and her tone detatched but realizing that it was going to be a losing battle. "I know what you're thinking about me right now--and you're wrong. Just like Edogawa-kun, I'm not what I seem. I'm not a little girl making up stories."

Mouri-chan's eyes had gone wide, now, staring at her as if suddenly..._afraid_.

Ai took another deep breath. "My name is Miyano Shiho, and all of this is my fault."

The silence still hung in the air. Ran was still pale, her eyes so huge in her face that she looked like a lostling child. And...in a way, she was.

"I can say without lying that _all_ of this is my fault," Ai went on, after long moments of quiet, folding her hands on the table and staring at them. The shock and pain on Mouri-chan's face was just too much to look at for long. "I'm the one who created the drug that turned Kudo Shinichi into Edogawa Conan. I'm the one who took the drug myself and forced my way into his life. I'm the one who offered him false cures and told him to keep lying to you. I'm the one who ran away and made him panic, and caused...all your suffering...I'm the one who kidnapped your son, and started all this pain again..."

Ai's face felt like plastic, though she couldn't stop the creakiness in her voice as she spoke. She didn't know what Ran was thinking--couldn't look up to spot her reaction. "There isn't a lot to explain," she stated, more softly, as if that would hide the tremble. "You already know _when_ Edogawa Conan came into your life. Now you'll know _how_ and _why_. Kudo Shinichi suffered the consequences of the drug I made, forced into the body of a child. I made that poision because...I once worked for the same people who want to kill Kudo-kun--and Yuuichi-kun, and you."

At this, she heard Ran gasp softly, felt the flinch of cold through her own heart. "That's right. I was one of _them_. I worked for them and made that damn drug for them, and then Gin went out with our first trial batch and..." She had to clear her throat and swallow hard to continue, not liking the way her own body betrayed her emotions. "The first human test subject was Kudo Shinichi, because he stuck his nose in where it didn't belong."

The next sound Mouri-chan made was something akin to a sob, but almost more like a tiny exclamation of _pain_.

"It was supposed to _kill_ him," Ai said, her eyes and face still as blank as ever though she kept losing more and more control over her voice. "As far as I know they still think he's dead. Or at least Gin thinks he's dead...but he wasn't, he was turned into a child who _knew too much_, and kept finding out more." Finally, she managed to look up at Ran--wincing visibly at the horrified, enraptured, betrayed expression that hung on the young woman's chalk-white face.

"That's...that's why he lied, Mouri-chan," the blond girl continued, her tones changing to a faint but definite _pleading_. "Because if anybody ever found out he was alive--if _anybody_ found out who he really was, it could trickle back to _Them_, and they'd come back to kill him for sure, as well as anybody who knew about him. They cover their tracks too well--they kill the target, his family, his employer, and his third cousin all to make sure that _no one finds out_..."

She saw Ran's eyes again flick to the room, where Yuuichi still remained, quiet and out of sight.

"That's right, Mouri-chan. Yuuichi-kun, too." She steeled herself and pressed on into something she knew would get a reaction, and a horrid one, but something she knew was true. "Or if they didn't kill him, they'd _adopt_ him--he's young enough--and mold him into what _they_ wanted him to be. Like they did to _me_. They _like_ special children--they'd make him a scientist, or an officer, or...or a _killer_ like Gin..."

"..._no_..."

The near-inaudible rasp of Ran's voice almost _startled_ Ai--she'd been silent and pale for so long that it seemed as if she'd never find her voice again. It made Ai glance at her, briefly, before staring at her hands again. "It's the truth. It's the way they operate. I don't know how much Akai told you, but...right now secrecy is our only chance at survival. And back then...hiding was the only choice we had--_he_ had. He didn't want to risk your life, or anyone's...so I hope you can understand why Kudo-kun chose not to tell you..."

The faintest sounds of crying made Ai cringe inside, miserably aching with her eyes full of tears she would not let fall. She _couldn't_--training, stubbornness, or whatever reason. Mouri-chan sat in her chair, tears rolling down her cheeks, shocked and suffering--and the sight of her made it ever harder to stay remote, to stay detached.

She had played a major part in ruining Ran's life, too.

"I'm sorry for all of this, Mouri-chan..." she managed to get out. "I hope you won't blame Kudo-kun for this, because I'm the one who started it all. Please don't be angry at _him_...it's not his fault..."

It felt strange to be begging someone not to hate someone else. Some detached part thought perhaps she should be pleading not to be hated herself. And that tiny, traitorous part of her heart wanted to scream, _Hate him! Blame him! Leave him! Let **me**--!_ But she would never let it speak--never let it have what it wanted.

It was only a shard of her heart, after all.

"Please...forgive him," she went on, her own voice choking. "He only wanted to protect you; he never meant to hurt you. I _know_ that. Please don't be angry with him, Mouri-chan...he's missed you so much, please don't..."

_Why am I crying?_ she had to wonder. _Why am I crying just like Mouri-chan? I'm not the one who just had my whole world turned upside-down..._

It was always so strange, feeling the hot tears well up and trickle slowly down her cheeks. It happened so rarely, she was unaccustomed to it. It was unwelcome, a sign of weakness--yet Mouri-chan seemed to do it a lot, and she was one of the strongest young women Ai knew of. Maybe tears were part of that strength.

_I'm crying because I know,_ she realized, comprehension coming slowly. _I know what she went through. I know how she feels. I watched her suffer without him...and him, at her side, without her...I watched them both so long...and it's **my fault**. _

_I'm trying to heal what I did wrong...but if she hates him now...God, how often did I wish for that to happen? But I know...if he loses her...he'll...he'll..._

At this point in his life, with all that had happened and all that had gone wrong, Ran was the only thing keeping him alive, stable, and possibly sane. If he lost her, he would die. His body might live, but his soul would go out like a snuffed candle. He would not fight death, then--he would not fight _Them_. He would collapse like a half-alive doll and just let Gin kill him...

"Mouri-chan..." She tried to speak, through her tears. It was so hard--just thinking of the right words was so _hard_.

"_Why...?_"

Ran's voice was an even more tearful mess than Ai's had tried _not_ to be. One word--one single query--seemed to phrase all her pain, all her questions, all her disbelief, all her betrayal and agony and confusion and love and longing...

Ai didn't have to wonder what she was asking.

"He loves you," she said, as the tears became a river. "He's _always_ loved you. He'll do _anything_ for you...at any cost...and he's been killing himself all this time to protect you from _Them_..." She managed a gulp of air to continue. "Hurting you hurts him even more...and he's been living in agony--I've _watched_ him, I've seen him crying...but even if he made mistakes--and he did make mistakes--he'd do anything to keep you safe...and he _did_ keep you safe. _That's_ why, Mouri-chan...he did it for _you_..."

Her voice broke, like a shattering crystal, emotions cutting into her throat like knives as Mouri-chan sobbed in earnest at her words. Crying like this was so rare for her that she hardly knew how to speak through it, and Ran's disbelief and sorrow sliced into her heart even more deeply than any of her own fears and griefs. Ran was the one who had _lived_ the loneliness, suffered the agony, right alongside Kudo-kun.

"He tried so hard for you..." she managed at length, raspy and quiet but at least understandable. She refused to wipe the tears away, even though they were streaming down her face--wiping them away would mean acknowledging them, and that wasn't something she was ready to do, even now. "So please, Mouri-chan...if you're angry about this...don't _stay_ angry with him. I deserve it if you're angry with me, but not him...he loves you, he _needs_ you..."

"How could he...?" Ran sobbed, grieved and demanding but not venomous. "He--he could've told me...! He lied to me...all this time...and he lied to _Yuuichi...!_" Her words were torn with gasping tears, with anger and denial and pain. "He didn't tell me...even when...even when we...!"

"He couldn't risk you," Ai stated, her knuckles white as she clasped her hands tightly. "If he told you...and anyone saw the difference...if anyone overheard...if there was _ever_ a slip..." She actually sniffled, a sound incongruous to her soft, roughened voice. "And when you became pregnant he was even more afraid...and he couldn't tell you _anything_. If something went wrong...he'd lose _both_ of you..."

Mouri-chan was crying into her hands; grief and anger warred for hold on her emotions, and her tears were the battleground. "He...he _lied_ to us..." she whispered.

"And if he didn't, you'd be dead!" Ai burst out, a bit more abruptly than she'd meant to. "You _have_ to understand this, Mouri-chan--secrets have kept us all alive. They've kept _Yuuichi_ alive..." She almost stood up out of her chair, _still_ refusing to wipe away the flowing tears on her cheeks. "He loves you both too much to risk your lives just so he could be happy...and even if you were sad he wanted you to _stay alive_."

Sitting stiffly, Ai watched the young woman crying softly, almost curled into herself on the office chair. "You didn't _see_ him, Mouri-chan," she said quietly, swallowing hard to keep her voice as clear as possible. "I wish you _could've_ seen. He called you last night...do you remember?"

Wiping her eyes, still crying, Ran glanced up at her and nodded.

"I wish you could've seen...how much he wanted to _come home_...how much he _wanted_ to tell you," Ai continued, tears coming anew at the memory. "He was _crying_, Mouri-chan...even before he hung up...because he couldn't tell you but he _wanted_ to, because he knew you were hurting and Yuuichi wanted to see him...but he _couldn't_ tell you, and it was _killing_ him...and I wish you could've _seen_ so you wouldn't be so angry with him now..."

"...not angry..." Ran shook her head, quick small jerks accompanied by a quaking voice. "I'm not but I _am_..." She looked up again, red-eyed and pale-faced, her breath still coming in gulps. "I just...I love him so much...and he was _right there...!_"

Ai looked down again, finding it hard to meet Mouri-chan's gaze when it was directed at her like that. "And that part is my fault..._I_ made it so he had to do that...so you should be angry with _me_, not him. I can say I'm sorry and mean it...but I know it isn't enough...not with all I've done. All I can do is...try to repair the damage I've done, and hope that it's enough to make amends..."

Now Mouri-chan's hands were tight in her lap, her head lowered. Occasionally, a tear would fall silently to land on her wrists. She was so _still_, yet almost trembling so... "I...I'm sorry to have to leave you like this, Mouri-chan..." Her own words sounded hollow and lame to her ears. "But I have some things to do...before Kudo-kun gets here. And he _will_ be here. I just have to finish this...it's very important..."

_If I finish this, and it works, he'll be able to come home to you._ Her mind finished what she could not say. _Like he was always meant to..._

She left her spot at the table quietly, watching Mouri-chan out of the corner of her eye--but the dark-haired young woman didn't move at all, except for those quiet tears falling. Ai stopped at Yakamoto's station to take one of the comm units with her--one that was set to the console frequency so that she could communicate with the perimeter guard through Yakamoto when Kudo-kun finally showed up. She would need to be able to tell them to let him in...

That is, unless he decided to let himself in. Ai frowned worriedly as she headed for her lab--trying to close Mouri-chan's silent presence out of her mind so that she could concentrate on her work--remembering that when push came to shove, when it all came down to the wire, Kudo-kun did not act as expected. She knew both from experience and from observation that he could become unpredictable and dangerous when Ran or Yuuichi were in jeopardy.

Even if he was a small-for-his-age twelve-year-old who barely weighed anything compared to a seasoned soldier, she had to pity anyone who got in his way when he was like that...

In her lab, Yuuichi was sitting on the cot with his picture. But he wasn't drawing; as she came in, he looked up at her with wide blue eyes that seemed oddly worried, almost frightened. "Ai-neechan?" he asked, a soft quaver in his voice. "Kaachan's crying?"

She stopped to try and offer him a reassuring smile, but it only came across as a sad one. "Yes, I'm afraid she is," she answered quietly. "She's...worried about your father, and...she needs some time to think."

Without replying, Yuuichi looked down at his picture. His small face looked apprehensive; not quite sure what to do, Ai let him stay where he was and went back to her computer to start working again. She had a lot of ground still to cover, and not much time left at all.

"You can draw another picture if you like," she told the child, without looking behind her. "Or you can go back to sleep. Edogawa-kun will be here...soon, I hope..."

She didn't see the way Yuuichi sat so still, like his mother out in the main room. She didn't see the expression on his face, or in his deep blue eyes. She didn't see his chin quiver in childish worry, nor did she catch his faint murmur over the hum of the machines she was starting up again.

Yuuichi stared at his picture, but his mother's tears made him sad, and in his mind he saw another face.

"_Niichan...?_" he whispered, confused and afraid.

* * *

Though the rush of the wind and the roar of the motor made it difficult to be heard, Conan managed to impart all of the story--in condensed form--to his friend and current source of transportation, Hattori Heiji. It took quite a bit of shouting and a few impatient repeats, but eventually the Osaka detective got the important details as they blasted down the freeway at top speed, constantly passing slower traffic.

Heiji's reaction was predictable, once Conan finished his shouted explanation.

"Well, shit! We'd better hustle!" Stating the obvious, he turned up the gas as Conan hung on grimly behind. "A canal and a factory with three smokestacks? You'd better keep your eyes peeled, Kudo! I don't know this town at all!"

Clinging to Heiji as they slalomed between trucks and around slower cars, Conan kept his eyes open for any sign of such a landmark. They had further to go, he knew--the industrial side of town was still ahead.

But he felt better having Heiji at his side, and moving quickly like this gave him a sense of freedom that he'd lost with his skateboard. He felt as though there was _hope_.

They roared on through the night, hoping that with their speed there were no observant policemen out patrolling the freeway. It was a long ride, holding on to Heiji as he shivered in the cold night wind; drying sweat and lack of motion had allowed his body to cool down, and now his skin was goose-pimpled and he was heartily wishing for the coat he'd left at the Mouris--even if it was only his school uniform jacket.

His uniform was going to be a total loss anyway, after tonight...

Suddenly, he lurched up straight, nearly unbalancing Heiji. "There! There!" he shouted, his voice breaking shrill and loud over the motorcycle's engine. "There it is! Hattori--turn now!"

Without hesitation, Heiji banked the motorcycle into the exit, narowly missing the bumper of another car--the driver of which was honking irately as they passed out of sight down the off-ramp. "Sorry 'bout that..." Heiji muttered, mostly to himself. "Bit of an emergency... Ah--now where, Kudo?"

Conan reached into his pocket and brought out the slip of paper, holding tight to keep it from being blown away. He squinted at the writing in the dim mixture of streetlight and starlight, then looked ahead at the street signs on the intersection coming up. "Turn right!"

All things considered, they made good time. Between Conan's sharp night-sight and Heiji's skill with the motorcycle, their travel to the target destination was unhampered by confusion or wrong turns. Soon enough, Heiji was damping down his speed and--at Conan's advice--turning off his motor to coast down the last street and into the alley that led to the next. The next street--where the tiny slip of paper indicated the address of the industrial storage lot was.

Staying in the darkness of the alley, Heiji pulled his helmet off of his sweat-tousled head and glanced back at his smaller passenger. "Now what?"

Conan pocketed the card once more. "This is it," he stated, sliding off the bike. "There's the lot he was talking about..."

"Are you sure 'bout this, Kudo?" Heiji asked softly, dropping the kickstand and stepping off the motorcycle as well. "You got that info from--"

"I'm sure," Conan told him tersely, barely glancing at him. "No question."

Heiji shrugged. "Oookay...so again, now what?"

The boy peered around the corner, looking up and down the street--and across it, at the high chain-link fence and the expansive, maze-like lot of warehouses ahead. It was _huge_...

He pulled back to face his friend. "You're going to stay here," he commanded firmly, "and wait. I only want to have one of us in the line of fire. Keep the bike ready, and I'll call you if I need you."

"Just _wait--?_" Heiji spluttered. "I come all this way just to drive you around and _wait?_"

"Hush! Be quiet!" Conan hissed, glaring at him. "Listen, I need someone to keep our wheels ready, got it? You're the backup. The cavalry. Whatever--this isn't about who gets to save the day, dammit! This is about Ran and Yuuichi's _lives_."

Heiji had already subsided at the urgent, angry look on his friend's face. "Yeah," he agreed, shaking his head at himself. "Never mind me--just go. But you call the _instant_ things get too hot, hear me?"

Conan nodded, peering around the corner again to see if there was anyone about. Spotting no movement, he skittered out of the alley and across the street at a diagonal. The gate of the lot complex was at least two blocks down--but he didn't want to chance walking in the front door. Heiji watched him go, leaning on the bike and crossing his arms to wait.

Reaching the other side, the small shape flattened itself to the chain-link in the shadow of a power pole, almost invisible even in his dirty white shirt. All Heji could see was a faint outline, and a flash of glass lenses for an instant.

After another pause to check things out, the little-boy shadow scaled the ten-foot chain-link like a squirrel, barely making it rattle. Then, without a hitch, the small lithe form slipped between the strands of barbed wire at the top, somehow avoiding any snags. It dropped to the ground in a low crouch, froze again for several moments, then darted off out of sight to the side of one of the outbuildings.

Heiji stared after him, amazed, then shook his head with a soft, wry chuckle. "How the _hell_ does he do that?" he whispered to himself with an appreciative snort, settling in to the long, boring process of _waiting_.

_to be continued_


	10. Part 9: Screaming Your Name

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**Author's Note: READ!** _The second section of this chapter was co-written by me and **Hell's Hauntress**! So be good readers and throw her as many kudos as you throw me. Or better yet--more! Section 2 is a lot bigger. And without Hauntress's invaluable help, it would never have turned out as great as it did!_

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_Don't turn away,  
Don't give in to the pain,  
Don't try to hide,  
Though they're screaming your name.  
Don't close your eyes;  
God knows what lies behind them.  
Don't turn out the light;  
Never sleep, never die.  
_--Evanescence, "Whisper"

**Part 9: Screaming Your Name**

Ran still sat in her chair, hands folded in her lap, having long since stopped sobbing though silent tears still trickled steadily from her eyes. She hardly knew what to think, or what to feel, or what to do next--and certainly not what was going to happen the next time she saw Conan-kun...Shinichi...

Whoever said the truth hurts could never have imagined _this_.

Kudo Shinichi...her friend, the one she loved, the father of her child...he was really...Edogawa Conan...the boy who was so dear to her, whom she had come to see as her little brother, who had been Niichan to her baby as long as he'd been alive...

How _were_ you supposed to put something like that together in your head?

He had _lied_ to her. All this time...lying and deceiving her...but as Haibara-chan--Miyano-san...whoever she was--said, he'd done it to protect her. And then Yuuichi. He couldn't let there be any chance of anyone finding out, or else...or else...

_Those men_ would come and kill them all--and that scared Ran enough that anger was still distant in her mind.

And she _still_ wasn't sure she could believe what..._that girl_ had told her. She had actually once wondered the same things, when she was younger--wondering, believing, positively _sure_ that Conan-kun was really Shinichi...but so many times she'd been proven wrong...she'd even _seen_ them together..._so many times_...

So many times that she'd begun to believe it--_really_ believe it...even if there were doubts...even if Conan-kun was still the strangest and most special little boy she'd ever known...

The hectic days of her pregnancy had made it nearly impossible for her to dwell on her old wonderings, pulling her mind from secrets and mysteries to her future and her child. And it also further separated _Kudo Shinichi_ from _Edogawa Conan_ in her own mind--a sweet, innocent little boy like that could not be _him_, could not be her one-time lover and the father of her unborn baby. It became impossible to associate Conan with that...so her last musings and wonderings and secret fears had faded into the background, drowned out by the noise of preparing for her child's birth--and then, taking care of her baby, raising her son...

She had, on some level, _forgotten_ all about it. Until Haibara-chan--whoever--looked her in the eyes tonight and tore aside the veil with three words: "_Edogawa-kun **is** Shinichi_."

And then it could no longer be a passing whimsy, easily brushed off. It was no longer just "Ran-being-silly"--it became _real_, like a piece of evidence taken from a crime scene; like a dead body that could no longer be hidden. She could no longer even subconsciously _ignore_ it.

And even if she could hardly even believe it, even after all that Haibara-chan had told her, her own memory began to confirm the truth she'd been given. Her own mind reached back, so many pieces beginning to fall into place--so many strange, unexplained things; so many moments and instants and glances and touches and _noticing_...

How many times had she _seen_ it, and not understood what she was looking at?

Her memory flashed--dozens of glimpses, hundreds of instants--moments when a shadow across Conan-kun's face seemed so out-of-place...or the times he'd _smiled_ at her, so strange...or the way he _looked_ at Yuuichi, with eyes so full... She had seen him smile and laugh with such brittle hollowness inside, never understanding--she had watched him watch Yuuichi and never known why such young eyes carried such painful shadows...so many things from the corner of her eye, so many things she'd looked _right at_ and never seen...

But she had seen him cry, too. She had seen him laugh and cry and smile and sob the night Yuuichi was born, and she couldn't understand _why_...but oh God what he must have felt and how much he must have been _hurting...!_

It made another sob well up from inside her--she had seen him hurting, watched him suffering and crying and dying inside and never even _known_...and she _knew_ how much he loved Yuuichi, how much he loved _her_, and she knew how it must have been killing him by centimeters every day to live like that, so close yet forever _so far_...right beside her all along...

It was such a horrible, _horrible_ kind of lonely...she'd thought her own pain and loneliness too much to bear at times--but to be so close to everyone and everything she loved, yet to be forever kept apart by a barrier no thicker than her own skin...no thicker than the dark threat of _death_...

But despite the tortures he'd endured, he had stayed. She knew that--she realized he could have left at any time. He could have run away, truly left her behind, gone with his parents and disappeared to America for real and never come home...but he _hadn't_.

He had stayed at her side through _everything_.

So many times--innocent little Conan-kun had always wanted to help her, make her feel better, do _anything_ for her...doing anything she asked, and more--always ready and willing at any time, from the very beginning and even _now_...for her and for Yuuichi he was _always there_...

God, how many times had she brushed him aside, trampled on his feelings, shoved him away--how many times had she hurt him herself? She hadn't even _known_...but he was always _trying_, trying so hard for her, to do everything he could...he was Niichan to Yuuichi even if he wanted to be Touchan, and he _tried_ with everything he did to be everything he _could_ to them.

She had just been thinking how well he was doing, filling in for Shinichi...when he _was_ Shinichi, right there the whole time, _trying_...

And now he was out there, _still trying_, out in the cold night somewhere, looking for them. He'd been in a panic all day to find Yuuichi--and now _her_--and he was trying to find them even now...

She hoped he found them soon. She hoped it with all her heart, even as she tried to dry the river of tears that wouldn't stop. She wanted to see him again--to really see him, now that she knew...and even if half of her was terrified and didn't know what to do when she saw him...the other half was desperate to look into his eyes and see _him_ again for the first time in so very, very long...

And before she could even complete her next thought, all hell broke loose downstairs.

* * *

The silence was almost stifling.

_Then again,_ Daisuke thought to himself, _that could almost be considered a good thing._ After all, they could be getting chewed out by Akai-san for complaining and talking about him behind his back--but as long as their dark-haired leader was content to lean against the wall with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and stare at the door, instead of chewing them all out _big time_ and threatening to hand them over as Haibara-san's latest test subjects, that was perfectly _fine_ with them.

Well, it _would_ be perfectly fine with them if Haibara-san had shown even the _slightest_ indication that she expected to survive the conversation with Mouri-san when they left. Since she hadn't, no one in their group was _quite_ comfortable yet.

_Not even tall, dark, and deadly there,_ thought Daisuke rather wryly as he watched his dark-haired leader, who was _quite obviously_ fidgeting in his own, more subtle way.

The men were still awkwardly shuffling around, not quite sitting down, not quite squirming with the anxiety and suspense but not far from it, either. Worried murmurs were being traded back and forth like choppy waves, as the men were actually more used to being snapped at and ordered around than just sitting still here and doing nothing. Yakamoto was the only person who had anything to do, still continuing his radio monitoring even when he was separated from his comm station. Aside from the unease hanging over them like a cloud, everything was pretty much _normal_...

Until Yakamoto-san's familiar quiet mutterings into the radios changed into louder, more jarring responses that drew the attention of everyone present--save for Akai, who was still preoccupied with his thoughts and didn't pay any attention whatsoever.

"I just got a report from the perimeter," Yakamoto growled crossly into the tense quiet that followed, looking up at the others. "That idiot Tsuji-kun didn't report in to the guard leader for his five-minute check. If the twit just somehow _forgot_ I'm gonna skin the damned--"

"Are they looking for him?" Akai interrupted sharply from his place at the wall, eyes narrowed, startling them to realize that he _was_ paying attention.

"One of them is going to his position now," Yakamoto reported gruffly, switching something on his headset and listening for several seconds--before his eyes hardened with alarm. "Shit! Ken says he's down! I'll put them on red alert--"

"Belay that!" Akai was suddenly over by his side before anyone had seen him move, earning a miffed look from the older man which he pointedly ignored. "Give me a handset."

Yakamoto blinked, looking almost _puzzled_ at his commander's unusual behavior, as he fished out one of the radios. Daisuke had to hide a snicker behind one hand. _Classic. Just classic. The look on his face...why don't I have a camera?_

The communications man spared one more instant before his surly attitude returned, smoothly handing his commander a radio. "Perimeter's on channel four."

Akai turned the hand-radio on, getting an immediate burst of panicky static-talk from the soldier on the other end. "Ken!" he snapped into the radio, breaking into the babble. "Get ahold of yourself, for pity's sake! Check Tsuji's vitals--is he dead?"

"No, sir," the man on the other end replied, sounding supremely confused and terrified. "He's, uh, still alive, but...sir, he's...asleep."

"Get a replacement for Tsuji and go back to back to your station, Ken," he snapped into the radio. "And keep on your guard."

He shut the radio off before the man's answering "Yes sir!" was even through, meeting the rather confused--and miffed, in Yakamoto's case--looks of his men with a small shake of his head. "It's not _Them_. They'd never leave Tsuji alive." There was something almost like a _smile_ in his voice, albeit wry, as he stated softly, "I believe our last guest has arrived..."

A general murmur of perplexed query went up, as the men quirked eyebrows and glanced among themselves. All of them--all standing upright now, cigarettes put out and faces drawn and tense--were waiting tensely as their leader turned back to face them. He looked them over, going from gaze to gaze as if measuring each of them. His own expression was grim and anticipatory as he spoke.

"Edogawa's here."

All the men glanced around at each other, their expressions equal parts incredulity and trepidation. They had all taken turns with Haibara's observation of Edogawa and the Mouris. And they had _heard_ a lot of things, both from Akai and Haibara--a lot of things, both briefing information and the occasional offhand comment, that made them nervous as well as disbelieving. It wasn't so hard to conceive of there being another out there who was like their Haibara-san--an adult trapped in the body of a child. But it was the _way_ she spoke of him--even the way Akai spoke of him--that gave them pause.

They had _heard_ things about this Edogawa.

"How much time do we have?" asked Mamoru, looking slightly edgy as he eyed the door.

"Not much," Akai replied tersely. "He's probably already closing in. Two of you--" He gestured to Daisuke and Keisuke. "--go out and take up positions observing the door. Take a radio and let us know when you see him. _If_ you see him..."

"Right." Daisuke hesitated a moment to borrow two radios from Yakamoto. While he was thus occupied, Keisuke headed straight for the door, turning the handle to step cautiously out. He didn't even make it halfway.

**_WHANG!_**

The loud hollow noise made every one of them jerk around in surprise; the unlucky victim let out a shrill, pained yelp--and it was to the utter disbelief of all present when the blond man was thrown backward by some tremendous force. He hit the floor with a swelling lump on his forehead and unconscious before he landed, his legs half out the door, preventing it from closing--and _locking_--again.

There was about another nanosecond of shocked pause as everyone _stared_...then an exploding flurry of activity as Akai shouted, "Get him up! Get the door closed--!"over the noise of everyone yanking out their weapons and arming themselves against the threat as they lurched to obey orders.

Everyone darted into action in a moment, with the same kind of almost hilariously insane hurry that one sees in many horror films--if the door doesn't get shut _now_, Something is going to come in and eat them. And somehow they knew--_all_ of them knew--that what was outside that door was _not_ something they wanted to meet on bad terms.

Throughout the chaos, Akai stood by himself, eyes blank as he strained to remember--something that Ai had told him earlier, about Edogawa's healthy supply of equipment and weapons...

Something about..._shoes_...

Realization hit him and he whirled around, pointing to the first two people he saw. "You and you! Get all kickable objects away from the door!"

"What?" Hiroshi yelled back, pausing for a second at the utter _absurdity_ of the request.

"Say _what?_" Daisuke echoed cluelessly.

"Just _do_ it!" Akai yelled, and the men scrambled to comply.

And so _another_ flurry of panic ensued with the other half of the soldiers trying to remove every kickable object within two meters of the door; pop cans that had fallen out of trash bags, empty buckets, Styrofoam cases, takeout bags from restaurants and everything in between, even going so far as to pick up the candy wrappers and saran wrap littering the floor--after all, they _were_ kickable, if not very aerodynamic.

The two localized flurries--one trying to scrabble up all "kickable objects" and the other attempting to get Keisuke's unconscious body out of the way of the door--only intersected and impaired one another, until the entire entryway was one mass of _entirely_ unprofessional chaos. If Akai had been so inclined--and if he'd had the time--he might have developed a headache.

But almost before the echoes of Akai's order had fallen out of the air, the _still_-unclosed door was yanked brutally open from the outside--and a small blur of a shape thrust itself inside, charging into the middle of the groups of men trying to get Keisuke clear and pick up anything kickable.

He _looked_ normal--red sneakers, dark pants, and grubby white shirt--but the _eyes_ did not look _anything_ like a little boy; they were blazing with fury and panic, looking ready to tear through Hell and back for his loved ones...and through _them_ if necessary.

For a crystalline moment, everyone _froze_. There was pure silence, as the two sides of the imminent battle simply _stared_ at each other. The men, who stared in almost _wonder_ at the sweaty, bedraggled little boy--who really _wasn't_ a little boy, and they _knew_ that, but knowledge was one thing and first impressions was another and this really did _not_ look like a soldier as far as they were concerned--who had the utter _gall_ to come charging in and knock out two of their own; the not-boy, falsely named Edogawa Conan, who stared at the battalion of hardened soldiers ready to do battle, taking only an instant to size up his surroundings and come to a decision.

Silence, broken only by harsh breathing, as the two sides stared at each other...

Then, the soldiers' brains kicked on again with the first thought they could readily track: _Intruder_. Their reaction was automatic. They were quick, they were professional, and they were well-trained; they moved in rapidly to restrain the interloper, but even a trained soldier's brain looked at the boy's slim frame and thought _little kid_.

Perhaps their mistake was that they didn't try hard enough.

Conan was furious, surging with adrenaline and rage so powerful it was like a potent drug, erasing his fear and sending him forward. All the soldiers charged as one, and with gritted teeth he met them.

The two men closest to the young boy dived in a tackle, ready to pin down the child that had rushed into their midst. The first one got a vicious kick in the groin for his efforts, making him yelp and roll away in an expletive-spouting little ball, effectively out of the fight for a while. Though in retrospect about the matter much, _much_ later, he considered himself lucky since Edogawa-kun's special shoes weren't on--_they_ might have turned his injured appendage from _tender_ to _broken_ in a mere instant.

The second soldier to rush Conan came from the side, and got a sharp elbow in the gut, jabbed there with all the weight and strength a rather unusual twelve-year-old could muster. As he doubled over, the boy caught the soldier's weight over his shoulders for a moment, letting the man's own mass and momentum work together to allow him to pull off a rather awkward throw--more of a rollover, really--that landed the attacker on his back on the ground, yet another groaning casualty.

Akai, on the other end of the fracas, was trying to wade _through_ it--trying to make himself heard over the pandemonium, to stop this before someone got worse than just hurt. He _knew_ quite well who this little not-boy was, and that not only would Ai have his head should they so much as scratch him, but it seemed as though their chances of defeating him were about even with his chances of hurting _them_ anyway, even with their much greater numbers and physical strength. "Stop this! All of you! _Stop!_"

He almost couldn't see Edogawa any more; the small form was lost somewhere in the squirming center of the battle over there by the door. Even practically unarmed, the boy was _hurting_ them--evidenced by the yells of fury and yelps of pain from the men. Small and strong and quick as a rattlesnake, they could hardly get a hand on him--and those that did quickly regretted it. Akai tried again to yell over the din, but his voice was enveloped in the howls of pain and grunts of anger and a little boy's wordless _scream_ as he fought with all he had against those he thought had taken his son...

"Stop it!" he shouted, though his voice, which usually held so much command and power over these men, was rendered as insignificant as a fly's buzzing, swallowed in the fray. "That's _enough! Stop it **now!**_"

At last, the icy roar of his voice cut through the noise, cut through the madness. Everyone suddenly froze on the spot, and once again, nothing could be heard save for the harsh breathing--and from the injured two, low moans of pain.

No one had ever even heard their dark-haired leader do so much as _raise his voice_...but he had just _yelled_--and out-and-out _roared_--all within the space of two minutes. Trembling with exertion and fury and even the beginnings of _fear_ of this very dangerous little boy that had come into their midst, the men lurched almost like guilty children as they suddenly hurried to disengage--pulling back out of arms' reach like a startled school of fish, weapons still ready but retreating, with only Hiroshi and Mamoru pausing to help their injured friends up before backing away and regrouping with their own. The withdrawing tide left behind a panting, wild-eyed young boy in the middle of the floor, his face set in a vengeful grimace that promised _pain_ to anyone who set foot near him again.

As it was, most of their number was nursing a bruise or a tender spot here or there, courtesy of the small intruder. Only Yakamoto and Eiji--both of whom had apparently used _common sense_--had escaped injury, having stayed out of it.

For Conan's part, he ached all over and felt like dropping dead and sleeping for a week, yet his burning desperation and almost _hatred_ of these men who had taken _his son_ and _Ran_ away from him kept him alive, kept him awake, kept him _together_ and _dangerous_ and very capable of taking out whoever might come in his way. The group of shadowy, black-dressed men did not inspire any confidence as to what might have _happened_ to his son...and certainly not the dark-haired man in the center that seemed to be their ringleader, the one he had seen before--_many_ times before, in daylight and in shadow--the safety off his pistol and the silenced barrel levelled straight at him.

Nevertheless, even with a gun pointed at his face, the burning pain and fear of losing his son and Ran kept his anger going, kept the adrenaline pumping in his blood, keeping his voice dangerous and clear if not trembling slightly with fury. "_**You**. Where are they?_"

Akai's brows drew down without his leave when he noticed that Edogawa, for all the scuffling, didn't have a single mark on him--apart from what looked like smudges and road dirt from his long day. He kept his silenced weapon steady, ready to fire at any moment as he spoke to the not-child in a cool, detached tone, trying not to let his anger seep into his voice as he watched his injured men limping to safe distances out of the corner of his eye.

"I assure you, Edogawa-kun, that Mouri Ran and _your son_--" He pointedly ignored the furious blaze in the dark eyes as he said the words. "--are in our custody and perfectly safe." There was a somewhat wry note in his voice, mixed with equal parts of faint admiration and seething anger as he continued. "So I'd _appreciate_ it if you didn't go knocking my men about like tenpins in a bowling alley."

There was a faint _slump_ to the young boy's shoulders, the relief in his small frame so strong it was palpable. Nevertheless, the dark eyes behind the glasses only hardened as he took another step forward. "Let me see them."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," Akai replied tonelessly, weapon hand still steady and gun barrel aiming at the boy's face. "You see, my associate is having a rather..._intimate_ discussion with Mouri-san, and they do not wish to be disturbed."

"Like _I give a damn!_" Conan was bolting for the stairs in a flash, but stopped short when a low _pffft_ cut through the air and something impacted hard with the cement inches from his foot. He froze, eyes wide as he stared at the smoking pistol in Akai's hand.

"You're fast, _Kudo-san_," he said appreciatively, blowing the smoke from the still-warm barrel and earning a wince from the boy at the address. "You're _very_ fast. But I'm a good shot--and is your speed great enough to outrace my bullet? Or--" he added, as the men around him still in commission slowly levelled their own weapons at him, thumbing off the safeties with soft _clicks_. "--_twelve_ bullets?"

The small figure in front of him didn't move, and there was a brief flash of satisfaction as Akai acknowledged that he _had_ the kid--or adult, whichever--and that he wouldn't budge another step. As he carefully approached him, however, Conan lifted his head, hot gaze flicking up--and Akai found himself _stopped_.

The murderous glare from those blue eyes looked _nothing_ like a child, flashing with helpless fury and the crystal-clear intent that he would _kill them all **right now**_ if he could. The trembling, seething, hateful fury that brewed deep in those inhumanly blue eyes was enough to give even _Akai_ pause--and he had _seen_ rage and hate and death in his time. He had seen _all_ these things, but never focused so, never directed at him with such terrible will and promise, never contained and honed into a keen, deadly edge made doubly dangerous by exhaustion and adrenaline and pure, absolute _rage_.

_Gone_ was the childish innocence he had seen when he watched Ai and this boy on his side-trips long ago; those masks had been stripped away from Edogawa in the instant the _panic_ and _desperation_ hit, telling him that he might _lose them_ if he didn't do something. And _gone_ was the fear that Akai had briefly seen in those blue eyes; the brief flash of fear had been transformed to fury--never-ending fury, terrifying in its wrath, that would not stop until _he had them back_--and those eyes were hardened like the worst criminal, the most battle-tried soldier, ready to do whatever it took to get his loved ones back.

Even Gin's eyes were mere cold marbles compared to this. Like a dark patch of water, like a black hole, this boy was far deeper inside than he seemed on the surface; this was utter Hate and Vengeance poured into a vessel that should have been far too small to hold it...

This was not a child. This wasn't even Kudo Shinichi. This was literally looking Death in the eye--the vengeful ghost of a father that never was, ready to rescue his son and beloved through any hell or suffering or opposition...ready to go right through _them_ like a knife through flesh, without a second thought.

And as Akai stopped in his tracks, the men around him drew back from the boy. More than any verbal warnings, more than anything they had witnessed here, seeing their hardened leader _hesitate_ in the face of a mere child brought them more trepidation than a thousand official briefings.

Akai scowled, banishing his own reservations even as he ignored the chilly fingers that had gripped his heart for an instant. He took a step forward again, disregarding the safety barriers his own mind tried to throw up to keep him at a distance from this diminutive threat.

Conan's face shifted to an almost unconscious snarl when Akai moved even one step toward him, his small body drawing in to what was nearly a crouch, weight balanced, arms ready, set to move in an instant. To the eyes of all the soldiers, the boy's defensive stance should have appeared ridiculous; a laughably scrawny wildcat cornered by a much larger, much stronger wolf--but they had already seen that _this_ little wildcat had very sharp claws, and his fangs posessed a dangerous bite. If pushed, he would attack without hesitation.

Akai stopped where he was, gun locked on his diminutive target. He glared down at him for several moments, measuring the furious defiance with some small admiration--there wasn't a trace of fear in the not-child; only raw anger and the fierce desire to find the ones he loved.

"Again, I will reiterate that Mouri Ran and the boy are alive, safe, and hopefully comfortable," Akai said evenly, keeping his tone darkly civil though his anger at the situation made him wish to _raise his voice_ again. "Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of _you_ if you don't stop this now. Stand down."

His command only made Conan tense further--this dangerous man wanted him to _surrender_ to them? To make him their prisoner--while they held Ran and Yuuichi _hostage_--all they would have to do was get a grip on him. One man, one hand, strong enough to hold on to him and hold him _down_--that was all it would take, he would be _helpless_ and he'd never be able to save Ran...

"_Don't touch him_--" Akai snapped suddenly, at the few who were trying to ease up behind the boy while his attention was on their leader. "--unless you want to lose those appendages."

Wary, the others subsided, not really sure if the threat alluded to Edogawa or to Akai himself. Either way, they didn't really want to chance it.

Almost startled that Akai had denied his men the chance to grab him--not that he hadn't _noticed_ them shifting around back there--Conan eyed the tall, dark-haired man suspiciously. "I won't surrender to _you_," he stated, the voice of a child twisted unnaturally into a low growl, eyes sharp in a hateful glare.

Akai's stare did not waver, and neither did Conan's. This was not a gaze in which sparks flew--the explosion had already happened, and this was the smoldering, radioactive aftermath, oppressive and potentially deadly. The air around them was silent again, but tense and almost _electrifying_ in its intensity--thrumming between the father determined to get his family back, and the soldiers sworn to protect this ground. The stalemate stretched on like infinity, like a never-ending road, pulling away--far, far beyond them until they froze where they were like statues...

A sudden crackle broke the spell--a crackle that sounded remarkably like a radio, but definitely not Yakamoto's--cutting through the air, followed by a small burst of static.

And oddly enough, it was coming from _Conan_.

Shocked out of his glare and looking almost _puzzled_, the faux junior high student reached into his pocket to pull out a small yellow badge emblazoned with a blue silhouette of Sherlock Holmes, and the words _Detective Boys_ inscribed on the side--laughable design, really, had this been a more appropriate moment for it. He clicked a switch behind the badge and put it to his mouth, blinking with confused hesitation. "Hello?"

But what came out with only slightly less clarity than Yakamoto's digital radio was not any voice that he would have expected, nor was it addressed to him at all--it was very familiar, though he hadn't heard it in four years, soft and lilting but with a weary, battle-hard edge that he had never noticed before.

"It's all right, Akai," Haibara Ai said over the line, her voice tired and soft. "Let him in."

Akai spun around, taking his attention off the very dangerous little boy for just a second as his onyx eyes, almost truly _perplexed_, looked askance at Yakamoto, who merely shrugged and held up his radio--where the switch was irrevocably turned to _On_. Behind him, Eiji grinned a somewhat sly grin at his leader.

Meanwhile, Edogawa Conan was almost frozen to the spot, his intellect analyzing but not _comprehending_ the meaning of that message. What she was _doing_ with these shadowy men aside for now, there was only one person he knew who had that voice--the same person who knew the exact frequency of their Detective Boys badges...

"_Haibara_," he whispered, looking stunned. "_You're_ the one behind all this...?" His eyes suddenly flashed pure murder with white-hot rage, lighting the dark blue color with an unholy fire that in that instant might have been bloody crimson. "_Haibara! **I'll kill you!**_"

Edogawa crouched back and charged forward in a single instant, his abrupt motion throwing off the targeting of the soldiers as they lurched to track him again. Even as Akai whipped back around to face the boy--already knowing he'd lost any chance at a shot--Conan slammed bodily into his midsection with bruising force, nearly knocking the breath from him as he was tumbled over backwards. Akai struck down painfully on his back, Conan on top of him and his gun clattering away somewhere on the concrete.

Startled, but still retaining his presence of mind, Akai tried to wrap his arms around the boy and _catch_ him--but the small body was shockingly _strong_, wrenching out of his grasp and leaping away from him, planting hard shoes on his chest to push off in a move that sent all his breath out with a painful "_Whoof!_"

Conan was beyond him and tearing toward the stairs before the rest of the men even realized what had just happened.

"_Shit!_" In a second, Akai had twisted to his feet and was after him, thoroughly _pissed off_ now as well as concerned for Haibara's safety. He shot toward the stairs, flipping over the banister and racing after the not-boy before his vicious curse had finished ringing in his men's ears.

On the stairs, Yakamoto missed his grab and Eiji was knocked to his rump--then _both_ of them were flung aside as Akai barrelled past them, hot on the heels of the dangerous little fugitive, fury burning in his dark eyes. He was faster because of his longer stride, but Kudo had a head start and was fueled by desperation. And even as fast as he was, _he wasn't fast enough--he just **couldn't** catch him...!_

Conan tore up the stairs, taking them three at a time, aware of the whole squad of men chasing him--just barely--but not giving a damn. He raced up the flight of steps, ignoring his pounding heart and burning lungs and the harsh sound of his breath--only skidding to a halt at the doorway in front of the last step, causing the men stampeding behind him to nearly trip over his small frame.

"Haibara...Yuuichi..._Ran...!_"

Haibara was nowhere in sight--and just as well, because the sight of _Ran_ standing there in the middle of the messy room looking alarmed and afraid made every other thought fly right out of his head. He forgot about Haibara--forgot about the blazing-eyed man standing just behind him--just stumbling through the doorway in utter, bone-weary _relief_ at seeing her alive and well and _safe_...

Then, her face pale and her eyes brimming with tears, Ran said one word--_one single word_ that made the bottom of his already-broken world fall out for the last time.

"_Shinichi...!_"

_to be continued_


	11. Part 10: Falling Down And Then Forgiving

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_Never thought I'd be in this place;  
It's someone else's life I'm living.  
Wish I were living a lie.  
The hardest part is when the bough breaks,  
Falling down and then forgiving.  
You didn't kiss me goodbye.  
I'm choking on the words I didn't get to say,  
And pray I get the chance one day.  
_--SheDaisy, "Still Holding Out For You"

**Part 10: Falling Down And Then Forgiving**

Everything _stopped_ when their eyes met--everything was forgotten in that same heartbeat, as Ran's breath caught in her throat with all the emotion that burst up inside her at the sight of him. It was really _him_...panting, smudged, disheveled, distraught, looking so small and pale yet so fierce and determined--and now there was such sudden fear in his eyes that what she'd tried to say was choked off, and all that came out was one single sob.

His eyes had gone so wide with utter, utter _shock_--she didn't think it was _possible_ for anyone's eyes to be so huge--and his face was even paler than before; he was completely frozen, like a child-sized statue, staring at her in something akin to _horror_ and _terror_ and complete disbelief...

And a hundred things flashed through his wide, wide eyes--everything from fear to regret to a thousand leagues of pain and grief that made Ran choke up more, unable to say anything but only to stumble toward him, her hands reaching out.

Reaching out just to _touch_ him, to see if he was really real--he'd really come for her, for _them_, through who knew what hells--just look at him, so exhausted and bedraggled, now so terribly frightened--frightened of _her_, because she knew; she'd found out his deepest secret and now she was so _close_...

So close and so confused herself; her eyes saw Conan but her mind knew it was Shinichi--but even so it was hard to believe, and easy to believe. He _looked_ like the tousled, sweaty little boy she'd always known--but his eyes were unguarded and within them shone _so much_...so much she'd never recognized, always blinded by her own perceptions.

And he was afraid, because she knew the truth--and she knew he thought she would hate him for everything now...she knew how awful he felt about all of it...

Her trembling hand only came up to touch his cheek, the tears flowing from her eyes like a silent waterfall as she felt him shaking just like she was...

_She knows, she knows, oh God she knows--_ Conan's mind beat about the inside of his skull like a frantic butterfly, panic speeding his heartbeat to a deafening throb. _How--how--? Haibara told her--now she knows--**she knows who I am--!**_

Terror danced with a strange, sad/glad relief. He couldn't speak, his jaw working--but both her hands came up to cup his face, and he could only stand there staring up at her with wide scared eyes full of trepidation and hope and apology and grief...

"_Shinichi_..."

That same tingle of terror/joy spun through him again--she was looking in his eyes, touching him, _speaking his name_, and it took his breath away, took all the energy out of his limbs as the fear and relief crumbled what was left of his rage-born strength.

The fires of anger and desperation guttered out at last, leaving him weak and trembling like the child he appeared to be; his knees went out even as she began to pull him closer. With a soft gasp she tried to support him but her own limbs were trembling like a bird's and somehow they both ended up sitting there on the floor, Ran reaching up with one fumbling hand to tug at the frames of the glasses he wore.

Those cursed, blessed glasses that had kept him masked from her for so very long--she pulled them from his face and they fell from her fingers, dropping unnoticed to the floor. And then she was looking at _him_ again, _seeing him_, free of the disguising frames--the little boy Kudo Shinichi had once been, in the happy days when they were children together. The little boy Kudo Shinichi was again, trapped this way but _still in there_, still the man she loved and cherished and _missed so much_...

Ran began to sob in earnest, cradling his face, pulling him forward until their foreheads met--and he irresistibly reached for her, his smaller hands touching her arms...almost _afraid_ to touch her at all but unable _not_ to, tears leaking from his own eyes as he listened to her cry.

"Shinichi...you stayed...you _stayed_...you were _here_, all along...you stayed with me..." Her sobs broke her words, making them almost indistiguishable, but somehow the communication between two hearts was as clear as her crystalline tears. "...you were here all the time...I missed you so much...but you were _here_...don't you _ever_ leave, don't you _ever_ go _anywhere_..."

"_Ran_..."

When he spoke for the first time, it was just a squeaky whisper as they sat there on the cold floor, knees mixed together and not caring about who watched them--not Akai, not the curious soldiers behind him, not Haibara Ai who stood just outside the door of her lab with a half-hidden, tortured smile on her face--not any of them; it was all forgotten, and nothing mattered but the two of them.

"Ran...I-I'm sorry," he gulped, losing himself in the tears. "...I'm _so sorry_...I couldn't tell you...I wanted to, so much...I'm sorry for _everything_...it's all my fault...I lied to you, I hurt you, I...I..."

"Shhh..." Her thumb stopped his lips, gently, as she pulled back to look at him, shaking her head to say all that she could barely form in words. "It's not...you're here now...and I _know_ you..." Through her sobs she tried a shaky smile, full of so much pain and joy that it almost broke him then and there. "I can _see_ you now..._Shinichi_..."

"_Ran...!_"

Pent-up emotion brought his voice out in a choked, almost childish sob--startled but grateful when she pulled him close at last, embracing him for who he was despite his age, despite his size, despite all the things she should have hated him for, should have railed at him for...so many things she should be _angry_ about, she should have pushed him away...but she didn't, she _didn't_--she pulled him in and _held_ him, and his heart throbbed so strong it almost _hurt_ with gratitude...

"_I love you, Shinichi,_" Ran whispered through her tears. "Don't you _ever_ leave me again...!"

_Oh God, Ran, I promise, never--**never**...!_ The ache of love and sorrow and gladness and relief shut off his voice--the overwhelming feelings a battered mix of joy and agony and blessed release. So many things that had been wound so tightly inside him for so long--not just today, but for four long years...no, longer than that--a knotted tangle of love and longing that had lasted since the very night Conan was born...

So many torturously heavy burdens, and he'd never even realized how horrible they were until he could finally _set them down_...

"Ran..._Ran_..._love you_..." he choked, holding on to her like a lifeline. "..._so sorry_..."

She held on to him, and he clung to her, and the whole world disappeared as two lonely hearts began to heal each other, sharing tears at last to soothe the pain that had gone on so long--but now could finally, _finally_ come to an end.

* * *

It was so poignant to watch that not even the most insensitive and flippant of Akai's men could manage a single comment--not a whisper, not even a breath could be heard from the soldiers behind him. Not a single one of them remained untouched by what they were seeing--struck silent and awed and disbelieving, staring mutely at the tearful scene in their own main office.

Akai himself couldn't even stop the fading of his anger. The wild-eyed little hellion that had taken on his entire troop and very nearly _won_ had collapsed into Mouri Ran's arms like the little boy he resembled, all the fire and danger gone out of him like an empty balloon. The change from deadly to harmless--from dangerous invader to weary child--was so sudden it was disconcerting. It almost wasn't the same _person_ who had crashed through their front door and flung himself headlong into battle with them.

Across the room, near the door to her lab, he could see Haibara--as rigid as steel, her face as flat as a plastic mask. But her eyes were bright and glistening with a pain he recognized through long familiarity, and though she held in her tears he knew that she was crying inside.

"Uh...Boss...?" Hiroshi's whisper, close behind him, reminded him of the presence of his men. They were uncertain and confused; still unsettled and wary from the recent "invasion," but unsure of how to proceed now that the vicious attacker had morphed into a helpless little boy. Most of them barely understood half of the real story anyway...

"Stand down," Akai murmured in reply, suppressing his own sigh of relief. "Go back to your stations, but stay out of the way."

"This mean I can get back to work?" Yakamoto grumbled quietly at Akai's other shoulder.

Akai nodded, glancing back. "Just...give him a wide berth, all of you. That's an order."

"Yessir," Hiroshi replied smartly, in no mood to argue that point--especially since he'd taken a couple of pretty good lumps from the "little boy" on the floor there. "Least he's not fixing to demolish the place any more..."

Akai stepped forward a bit, out of the door, as the men squeezed past him, looking ridiculously furtive as most of them all but tiptoed into the room--comically skirting the tables and chairs to maneuver around the two sitting on the floor, most of them heading for the cots at the far side of the room, presumably to lick their wounds and stare surreptitiously at the one-boy army. A few elected to linger in the doorway a moment before returning downstairs, not quite brave enough to remain--or perhaps wiser than those who chose to stay upstairs.

Akai watched Eiji and Yakamoto make beelines for their respective stations, again forcing down the sigh that wanted to well up at the fact that things hadn't gone as bad as they could have. _Crisis averted,_ he thought to himself, keeping an attentive eye on Edogawa even as he watched Haibara. _At least for the moment. I don't even want to imagine what that little monster might have done to Haibara if Mouri-san hadn't been standing right there..._

Someone with eyes like that could be _very_ dangerous, and Edogawa had proven that he didn't have to be armed or even at full size to put a respectable dent in a group of professional soldiers. The second response Akai fought down was a grudging, satisfied smile; all of this would turn out very well for his organization, if he had any say in the matter--and he _did_.

Like him, Haibara remained where she was at the doorway to her lab, watching Edogawa and Mouri-san with full/empty eyes. She was professional, if nothing else, and even as disconcerting as her blank mask was on a young girl's face, she was obviously determined to hold her course.

Akai moved to go to Haibara's side. However, he was not as furtive as his men, and did not give Edogawa as wide a berth as even he himself had suggested.

He had hardly taken two steps when Edogawa jerked around with a look of wild fight-or-flight in his wide eyes for an instant. His eyes were seemingly larger still, without the glasses--huge pools of near-luminescent blue--but only for that moment in which Akai's movement had alerted him. Even as the tall man froze in his tracks--involuntarily yet _again_, to his private chagrin--those eyes narrowed and a flicker of _danger_ sprang anew in them like a lamp lit from within.

And even as Edogawa's slim frame seemed to gather like a coiled spring--even sitting perfectly still as he was--Mouri Ran's arms slipped further around his shoulders, holding him back. "Shinichi," she spoke, her voice hoarse and soft. "It's alright. They're...friends. They haven't hurt me--please, just listen..."

Some of the _edge_ eased out of the boy's muscles. "Ran...?"

"It's okay, Shinichi..."

"Indeed," Akai added in, his tones as level as ever--daring to step even closer, if to the side. "If you had listened to me in the first place, you'd have heard me when I told you that Mouri-san and the child are perfectly safe."

Conan's eyes narrowed. The blue orbs shouted, _Why should I trust **you?**_ in the clearest of voices, even though the boy spoke no actual words.

Akai pointedly ignored the glare, instead offering a hand to the young woman sitting on the floor. "Mouri-san...?"

Ran stared at his hand for a moment before blinking in comprehension. "Oh--thank you..."

As Conan scowled, Ran allowed the dark-haired man to help her to her feet, her own legs rather wobbly. She released Akai's hand quickly, watching Conan carefully as the boy tottered to his feet like a weary newborn colt. His dark stare never left Akai's face the entire time he helped Ran up, and the warning in his eyes refused to fade until the man had stepped back out of arms' reach of her.

However, Conan's glare did not last long once memory jolted him--he turned quickly back to Ran, his voice suddenly almost breathless. "_Where's Yuuichi...?_"

"He's fine," Ran replied shakily. "He's alright, too...he's just..."

"He's resting," Haibara Ai finished for her softly, from behind her. "In my lab."

As if he'd forgotten her presence until now, Conan whirled and stared at the girl with mixed emotions of shock, rage, relief, and betrayal. His mouth opened and shut, working, words trying to form around hissing grimaces of fury and sorrow; his hands reached out from his sides, fingers nearly flexing into claws, a gesture that was part angry threat and part desperate supplication. He stared at her for a very long time, trying to say something--_anything_--that would even begin to quantify all his questions, all his pain, all his grief and tears and _years_ of wondering, all that he'd been through because she left...

"...Haibara..._Haibara...**why...?**_"

That was all it took; her mask began to crumble.

"I'm sorry, Kudo-kun...I'm sorry..."

It started slowly, with the faintest trembling of her lower lip as her once-blank eyes began to glisten. Tears welled up visibly, startling everyone who saw them; her face ceased to be a plastic mask and became living flesh once more. She still fought against the expression of sorrow but it was too late; it was already plainly _there_, and even Conan could see it--though it did little to assuage his anger and accusation.

Even Ran could not tell if the boy's face displayed grief or anger, and her uncertainty made her hesitate to reach out to him, to stop him. No one could move, not even Akai--something had frozen them.

Conan's hands clenched and unclenched, white-knuckled; his teeth gritted and his eyes were dark, and there was something both frightening and piteous in his expression. The way he reached out to the motionless blond girl made it seem as though he wanted to grab both her shoulders and shake the answers out of her.

"Haibara...you left..." he hissed, half incoherent. "...you ruined _everything_...you..."

"I'm _sorry_..."

He took one step toward her.

"_No!_"

With a shrill cry, a dark-haired little form seemed to come from nowhere, leaping in between them with arms outflung, stopping Conan in his tracks with wide-eyed, pale-faced, chin-trembling defiance.

"You leave Ai-neechan alone!" Yuuichi demanded, angry and beseeching. Having watched everything from the safety of the laboratory door, he had seen what lay in his "Niichan's" eyes and reacted, knowing that the older boy's anger was somehow _wrong_. "She says she's _sorry!_ She's sorry so you stop bein' mad!"

Arms gone slack at his sides, Conan stared down at the child in shock--along with nearly everyone else in the room. His frame slackened visibly, the sight of his son drowning a good portion of his anger and taking the fight right out of him once again. His voice cracked with relief, as well as confusion. "Yuu-kun...?"

Yuuichi was almost as tearful as Ai, staring up at the older boy in determination laced with hesitance and almost faint fear. "Don't?" the little voice pleaded, wavering. "You're scary...don't be mad, she's sorry...please?"

Conan caught his breath, flinching back that step he'd taken. Then Ran was there, quickly kneeling down to pull Yuuichi into her arms and cradle him, letting him hide his face in her neck.

"There, there," she soothed, holding him tight while her eyes traced up to Conan's suddenly-bleak face. "It's alright, Yuu-chan..."

"I..." Pale with apology, Conan seemed to have forgotten about Ai again. Instead, he reached near-involuntarily toward Yuuichi's trembling shoulders, stopping just short of touching him. "I didn't...Yuu-kun, I..."

Blue eyes peeked hesitantly out at him, but Yuuichi did not let go of his mother. Ran patted the child's back reassuringly, trying for her cheerful mother-voice and only barely managing to keep the tearfulness out of it. "See? Look, Yuu-chan--Niichan was just a bit upset, it's okay now. Nobody's going to hurt Haibara-chan..."

At this, Conan glanced up at Ai again, taking in the glistening trails of moisture down her cheeks. She had not moved at all, not forward or back, and even now she did not flinch from his gaze. His eyes had lost their furious fire, and only throbbed with the dull, weary ache of an old wound.

"I'm sorry...Yuu-kun," he said, not looking at the boy, swallowing hard to marshall his voice. "I...have a lot of things...to ask Haibara about..."

Mute, Haibara Ai nodded. And that was all she did, all the movement she had made since her apology; she had not run, nor hidden, nor defended herself.

Akai spoke up at their side so suddenly that all of them but Ai jumped; they had been so focussed that they had not noted his approach. Conan's eyes flashed guarded warning again, but calmed when the tall man spoke.

"There are many things to explain," he said grimly, unperturbed at the tableau. "But not here. I think the privacy of the lab would be much more ideal than this area."

Ran quietly agreed. Faint noises of disappointment could be heard from the men across the room; it wasn't every day they got to watch a drama such as this unfold before their very eyes.

Haibara led the way to the lab door, Akai close behind her. Ran followed, carrying Yuuichi, and behind them all trudged Conan.

Yuuichi's eyes still watched from the safety of his mother's arms, staring down at Conan in a way that made him concerned. There was something worried and apprehensive in the little boy's eyes, and it _hurt_ to have such uncertainty and fear directed at him. He had expected at least a greeting, maybe even a smile...but it was as if he'd suddenly become a stranger.

_to be continued_


	12. Part 11: Warn and Whisper

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**AN:** _If anyone's curious, a picture of Yuuichi can be found on my website. Story-based fanart is also most welcome, and will be enshrined and worshipped devoutly._

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_If dust could only mutter, or in laughter trill;  
If it could warn and whisper from the windowsill,  
For it's the only witness that can testify.  
Can I spit out the truth?  
Or would you rather just swallow a lie?  
_--Elvis Costello, "Dust"

**Part 11: Warn and Whisper**

The _snick_ of the lab door closed them all in together. Woodenly, Ai took a seat on the stool by her computer, and Akai leaned against the wall near her, arms crossed, observing the others across from him. Ran hesitated for a few moments, glancing about the room, before settling down on the cot in the corner, sitting her small son in her lap and still holding him close.

Conan remained near the doorway, between them in no-man's-land, glancing back and forth--angry eyes directed at Ai and her cohort, softening when they flicked to Ran and the child. Without his glasses, without any masks or pretenses, he seemed more like Shinichi than he ever had before, and Ran's throat tightened as she watched him.

"Why don't you sit down, Kudo?" Akai said at length, tired of watching the boy hesitate.

Conan twitched at the name, glancing at the little boy in Ran's arms--a little boy who seemed almost to be nothing but eyes; wide bright-blue eyes in a pale, worried little face, still staring at him. The strange almost-fear was still there, making him reluctant to approach--reluctant to make any of that fear increase. He glanced at the older man, not flinching before the dark gaze.

"Don't...I...Yuuichi's..."

"He's not stupid," Ai spoke, barely audible, from her hunkered place on the stool. "You were listening to us earlier--weren't you, Yuuichi-kun?"

Still clinging tight to his mother, the boy glanced at her and nodded. Conan's eyes shifted to him, swallowing. "What...what did you hear, Yuu-kun?" he asked, voice faintly hoarse.

Even Ran had begun to go pale, her arms tightening slightly. It was one thing for the truth to be revealed to her--she could understand it. But Yuuichi, who was smart enough to know what was being said, but was still such a young child...

Yuuichi turned his head a little, looking out at Conan with a gaze that seemed a trifle less _hiding_. "I heard..." he began hesitantly, softly, as if almost too shy to speak. "I heard...Niichan's not...really Niichan." His bright eyes crinkled a bit with confusion. "Niichan is...Touchan...?"

Conan took a shaky breath, his throat suddenly very dry. The wide blue eyes that fixed on him, so full of worry and uncertainty and half-fear, stung him deep inside somehow even more than Ran's gaze had, when he'd first rushed into the room and heard her call his true name...

Akai made a small sound that might have been a mumbled disparaging comment or perhaps just a murmur of respect for the small child's intellect. Ai watched with a closed gaze, betraying none of her silent concern.

Somehow, it was Ran who broke the silent tension. Ran, who had suffered, who had learned the truth, who had cried, who had come to understand. She sat her young son up on her lap, still holding him close but not cuddling him, and offered him a reassuring smile.

It was almost a miracle that she could smile like that, with all that had happened. The warmth of it reached even Conan, who stood still like a wary deer, painfully unsure.

"Yes," Ran said at last, fixing Yuuichi's wide-eyed gaze with her own. "He is. You're right, Yuu-chan. Niichan is Touchan."

Conan swallowed, as the little boy blinked at his mother for a moment. Then, slightly wary, he glanced at Conan, then back at Ran. "But...Niichan's...he's a..."

"A kid." At Conan's low, rough words, Yuuichi's head cranked around to stare at the older boy standing head down, hands fisted, near the door. "Just a kid..."

Ran's eyes flashed pain that Yuuichi thankfully couldn't see. But then she smiled again, in her usual way; somehow, adversity made her even more _Ran_ than she usually was--it only made her stronger, more beautiful...

"Kaachan?" Yuuichi spoke up, quavering, questioning. "How?"

"Do you remember what you heard?" Ran asked, making herself sound calm and cheerful. "Some bad men made some poisonous medicine, and it turned your Touchan into a little boy."

"It made him small...like me?" The child's eyebrows went up.

"Not quite as small as you..." Ran glanced at Conan, the faintest of smiles tugging at her lips. "...but as I remember, he was pretty small."

Conan blinked when Yuuichi giggled softly, shortly. The little boy glanced back at him again, the wariness vanishing into a shy smile, the beginnings of unexpected comprehension.

"An' I remember what Ai-neechan said," Yuuichi added, as if he were excited to reveal his discoveries to his mother. "Niichan...Touchan...has to _pretend_. 'Cause the bad guys don't like Touchan, but they don't know Niichan. So they can't find him."

"Very good," Ran praised him, running her fingers over his soft hair. Tousled with sweat and sleep as it was, it stuck up in ways that made him resemble his father even more strongly. She looked up at Conan, who still stared at the two of them, at a loss. "I think he's pretty much got it, don't you?"

Conan gulped again, his eyes flickering once again between relief and trepidation. He managed a faint, disbelieving nod, barely a visible bob of his chin. He hadn't expected Yuuichi to understand it, much less deal with it so...calmly.

"Shinichi," Ran stated, firmly fixing him with a stare. "Stop gawking and come over here and sit with your son."

Akai muffled another sound that just _might_ have been a snort. Conan jerked once again at the use of his name, staring at her for another second--before he skittered obediently to the cot, perching himself carefully on the edge of it like a nervous bird.

"You spent all day looking for him," Ran went on, still giving him an unbending look, "and you've been frantic to find him. And now that he's here, and we both know what's really going on, you can't even say anything to him?"

Rather cowed, Conan's mouth worked as he stared up at Ran with wide, flinching, guilty eyes. "I...I didn't...Ran..."

As it turned out, he didn't have to say anything. Ran merely loosened her grip on the child in her arms, and he did the talking for both of them. Yuuichi didn't have to speak, either; when his mother released him, he all but leaped onto Conan, nearly knocking him over.

"Niichan! I missed you!" the child babbled, flinging his arms around the older boy's neck. "I missed you all day! I had fun but you weren't here!"

"I'm sorry, Yuu-kun," Conan croaked softly in reply, his arms coming around the little boy almost of their own volition. "I'm here now...I'm _here_..." _...and I'm never letting you go again..._

Yuuichi pulled back a little, to look into Conan's face with wide, glimmering blue eyes and a surprisingly satisfied smile. "You came just like you promised," the small boy said, looking remarkably wise. "'Cause Niichan is Touchan and Touchan is Niichan...just different size. An' you can come to Kaachan's birthday!"

Ran caught her breath. "Yuuichi...!"

Conan clutched the child close again, the tightness in his throat making it hard to breathe. He tried to hide his tears in Yuuichi's soft hair as the small boy held on to him with a contented sigh. Her eyes glimmering, Ran put a gentle arm around his shoulders, and for a moment he really _felt_ it--he felt like he was _home_...

Yuuichi had gone still, letting Conan hold him--and happy to be held, as well. Now he understood, in his own childish way, why sometimes Niichan would be strange and different. When he stopped pretending to be Conan-niichan, Yuuichi got to see a little bit of Touchan every time.

He loved Niichan lots. And he loved his Touchan a whole bunch too. And if Niichan and Touchan were the same, did that mean he loved him twice as much?

Yuuichi just snuggled deeper into Conan's arms, not bothering to wonder about the mathematics of this love and warmth. All that mattered to him was that Niichan _and_ Touchan were here, they were safe, and everyone was happy again.

Well, _almost_ happy. Ai-neechan still looked so sad, and Niichan was crying a little bit, he could tell.

Across the room, Akai finally cleared his throat. "_If_ you are all finished with the sentimentality," he stated--though his voice carried far less bite than one would have expected, "we do have some business to discuss. We have a rather urgent situation ahead of us."

Ran's hand tightened a little on Conan's shoulder. "How urgent, Akai-san? You told me before--"

"I know what I said," Akai interrupted, not letting her finish. "And it still holds true. This location is probably the safest place for you to be at this point. But I cannot guarantee how long it will stay that way, with what's been happening tonight. We've been coming and going too much, and it must have attracted some attention."

Keeping Yuuichi in his lap, Conan glanced over at the older man, alerted by the terse tones. "It's _them_, isn't it?" he asked softly, once he was certain his emotions would not cause his voice to wobble. "Those men in black...they're looking for you. For _us_. I probably stirred them up but good when I went after their agent in the school..."

Ran gulped softly, staring worriedly at Conan for a few moments. "In the school...?"

"So, you know about that one." Akai's eyes glittered. "And she knows about you. As far as our data can tell us, she's one of their higher-ranked members. Apparently she's in the school to gather information--and to get close to the boy."

Conan frowned, his arms holding his son a little closer. "Why should they be after him? Besides trying to draw out Kudo Shinichi..."

"There could be a lot of reasons, only one of which was to draw you out and kill you," Akai replied briefly. "We aren't sure why she would have chosen just to observe your little drama for such a long period of time, but we can only guess that she wanted something other than your death. What that is, I don't know."

Ai glanced up, the knowledge granted by her insights earlier making her shiver.

"Then...what now?" Ran asked softly. "If they know who we are...and they're coming for us..."

Akai scowled shortly at Conan. "Rushing in to confront the agent at the school was probably the worst thing you could have done, Kudo. Once their ruse is blown, they'll decide to go straight to Plan B, and throw subtlety out the window. You made yourself an active threat by doing that."

Conan's eyes narrowed. "What's Plan B?"

"Storm the castle," Ai spoke up quietly in answer, her first words in quite some time, her eyes meeting Conan's. "Checkmate. Kill the King, and take the Prince."

"You mean..." Conan's narrowed eyes grew wide. "They're coming here _now?_"

"In all likelihood, yes." Akai unfolded his arms, standing up straight. "It's not inconceivable that you may have been followed. Or even myself, when I went out to pick up Mouri-san. Things were too hurried to be sure. To be safe, we should assume that they are on their way now and prepare accordingly."

"Prepare?" Conan husked softly, his face bleak. Beside him, Ran was pale. "Prepare--hell! We've got to go! We have to get out of here--get to someplace safe, where they won't think to look." He glanced at Ran, then at Yuuichi, both of them gazing at him expectantly. "We could hop a bus for now, just to get out of town...then I could get ahold of my parents, and they'd get us a flight to America and we could hide out with them for a while--Tousan has friends in Interpol, they can help us..."

"Interpol is as riddled with their agents as it is with ours," Akai snorted. "And if you're going to run away like a rabbit, Kudo, at least think before you scamper off to hide. Right now, I'd say that all of your contacts are being monitored--your parents, that professor neighbor of yours, any friends in the police. A phone call to them could have the Blacks down around your ears in half an hour."

"Then..."

Akai shook his head. "You couldn't get out of the country without them finding you first."

Conan gritted his teeth, anger and fear renewing the adrenaline that had faded from his previous battle, filling him again with that shaky thrum. "I won't just sit here and let them kill us--!"

"I'm not the kind of man who plans on passive defeat," Akai interjected sternly, stepping closer to Ai's side. "And sitting here waiting for death is _not_ an option. Rest assured that when the time comes, all of you will be removed to another location safely. We just can't move yet, with Haibara's work in such a delicate phase. Once she finishes, we'll be off--the sooner the better."

Both Ran and Conan glanced at Ai with interest, Conan's face flickering from puzzlement to hopeful confusion. "Work?" Ran queried, looking a little more positive. "What's she working on?'

Yuuichi grinned happily from Conan's lap, his face brightening at the mention of Ai's project. "She's making Touchan's medicine!" he piped up helpfully, smiling at his parents. "I helped!"

"Medicine?" Ran whispered, staring. "You...you mean...?"

Akai glanced at the young blond-haired girl beside him, and with a brief moment of meeting his eyes, she finally answered. "An antidote for the effects of APTX 4869."

Conan's eyes were wide, his face starkly shocked. He gaped at Ai, sudden, irrational _hope_ flinging itself up from the bottom of his heart where it had lain dormant for so long. Dormant--sleeping crushed under years of despair and pain, ever since Ai had disappeared, leaving him to come to grips with the fact that there _was_ no cure, there _was_ no hope...but now there was again, even if it was faint and fleeting. There was a _chance_--he could be cured, he could go back to who he was, who he always should have been. And even with this faint thread of impossible promise, his broken, weary, long-suffering hope rose like a battered phoenix, having never been quite dead but dying slowly--trapped on the cusp of death, never able to completely give up...

"You have a _cure?_" he rasped, barely managing to form even a whisper.

"I _may_ have a cure," Ai replied softly, glancing at the incongruous family on the cot. "It's still uncertain, even at this point. I can't know for sure until it's tried. And then..."

She glanced away, even as Conan leaned forward. "But there's still a chance?"

"A chance." Ai didn't look up again. "A chance it could work. A chance it might not. A chance it might do something worse. A chance it might work only halfway. A chance it could kill you."

Ran gasped softly, even paler than before. "If it's that dangerous..."

"When can I try it?" Conan asked sharply, his eyes as bright as stars. "When will it be ready?"

"Shinichi--!" Ran exclaimed, gripping his arm. "You...you can't--what if...what if it doesn't work? I just got you back--I don't want to lose you...!"

Startled out of his flurry of eagerness, Conan looked up at her, seeing tears spring anew. "Ran, I...I can't just..."

"But what if you _die?_" she whispered.

"That's only one possibility," he told her softly, trying to hide his own worry. "And...even so, I want to try. If there's a chance I can be myself again--if I can be who you and Yuuichi need me to be, then I--"

"I don't care about that," she interjected, her hand tightening on his arm as if she wanted to pull him to her but couldn't because of the child in his lap. "Whatever you look like, you're still..."

"Niichan won't die," Yuuichi spoke up suddenly, solemnly, looking back and forth between them. "Ai-neechan is really smart. She knows how to do this stuff. _I_ didn't die. I felt really yucky and it hurt lots but I didn't die."

Ran gasped again, going silent. She stared at her son, then at Ai, her face gone pale. "What...?"

"Ai-neechan needed help, so I helped," Yuuichi volunteered brightly. "She did lots of tests an' things, like blood an' stuff. The medicine made my tummy hurt an' everything hurt all over, but I got better an' we did more test things." He smiled up at his mother. "Don't worry, Kaachan. Ai-neechan's medicine will work."

A hot/cold thrill of shock spun through Conan's stomach as Yuuichi's words began to register. The cold part sank, as cold air sinks, to the bottom of his belly, settling like an icy knot in his intestines. The hot part rose like steam into his throat, into his brain, until he almost couldn't think, almost couldn't speak. Like a flame, it heated his mind to an edge of fury similar to what he'd felt facing Akai earlier.

"Haibara..." His voice was a growl, almost nothing like a young boy's voice at all. "What did you _do_ to him?"

Ai flinched, but only Akai ever saw it. She never looked up as she spoke, her voice as even as a calm sea despite the pinched paleness of her face. "In order to synthesize a cure for your condition, I was required to expose Yuuichi-kun to the same catalyst that you had experienced, to analyze the condition and formulate an antidote." In her lap, her folded hands tensed. "I was required to dispense to him a dose of Apotoxin 4869."

Ran gasped a third time, this one from pure shock.

The next sound Conan made was _not_ a gasp of shock, though it was probably meant to be. It was more like a short cry of mingled outrage, fury, and fear, high-pitched and sharp and almost echoing in the small confines of the lab. Ai flinched again at the sound of it, still unable to look up--and probably lucky she didn't, since his features had become locked in a terrible snarl of rage.

"You--you--you fed him that God-damned _drug?_" he shouted, his tones shrill and rough--so angry that Yuuichi, in his lap, gasped and buried his face in Conan's shirt, frightened by his father's fury. "_Damn_ you, Haibara...!"

He was angrier than he'd ever been--perhaps even angrier than when he'd come into this warehouse office to find a troop of soldiers standing between him and his son. Then, at least, the dangers had been more mundane, and mostly directed at himself. This--_this_ was somehow more horrible; someone whom he thought of as an ally, perhaps even a friend, had gone so far as to force his son to swallow that thrice-cursed, Hell-damned _poison_.

He was so angry he couldn't think of any words to say. He shook in incoherent fury, his features a terrible mask, his jaw working and his hands clenching in Yuuichi's shirt, fighting himself for control, for something to say that could possibly express the depths of his rage.

"How...how _could_ you...?" he finally managed, his voice a loud, snarling mockery of a child's. "You know...Haibara--you of all people _know_ what it could do--!"

He was interrupted by a high-pitched, wordless cry. It was slightly muffled, coming from the direction of his chest--where Yuuichi was currently hiding his face, trembling faintly with tears. The little boy was crying, cuddled close to him in search of reassurance, his loud cry a protest against the anger and fury that fairly thrummed in the air around his father.

The small boy had wailed simply to break the shell of that anger, to make the rage and the shouting stop, because it was even worse than the last time he'd interrupted something like this--Niichan was so angry it frightened him, so angry he seemed like a different person, not Niichan or Touchan at all.

And Conan _did_ stop--the very instant the shrill cry reached his ears. A child's wail so full of fear--_his_ child's wail--triggered instinctive reaction; instant concern, even if that concern was mingled with startlement and confusion. The furious tension slid out of him, replaced by a more gentle kind of distress. His fists loosened, even as his arms tightened around his son, not in anger but in worry. "Yuu-kun...?"

"Stoppit, Niichan," Yuuichi mumbled into his shirt, hiccuping. "You're scary again...don't be mad, please? Ai-neechan's makin' medicine...she has to, it's for you..."

Through ragged breaths, Conan gently disengaged Yuuichi's hands from his shirt, pulling the little boy back so that he could look into his face. He gazed down at tear-streaked cheeks, into eyes that were a mirror of his own, brushing the child's bangs back from his forehead and scrutinizing his son's features for any sign of damage or discrepancy. One faintly shaking hand ran fingers carefully down the boy's soft cheek, to the jawline, keeping the small face upturned to his.

Yuuichi was unharmed--he _knew_ that, really; whatever Haibara had done had taken place long before he'd arrived, and the child had shown no ill effects. But knowing that Yuuichi had swallowed the very same toxin that had destroyed his life had sent whirls of helpless terror and rage through him like he'd never felt before--making him almost expect to see his son suddenly die in his very arms...

"You're okay...right?" he whispered, barely more than a shaky breath--he _knew_, but somehow he had to reassure himself.

Yuuichi sniffled once, then faintly nodded. "I'm okay...Touchan."

Conan let out another shaky breath, this one of relief and welling emotion. It was the first time--the _very first time_ that he had looked into his son's eyes and been called that name directly. His feelings threatened to overwhelm him, closing his throat and rapidly drowning any vestiges of rage, leaving him with only a dull anger that would resurface when he thought of Haibara.

Ran, still pale, was in tears of worry and fear--and her own anger at the risks her child had been exposed to. In his ire, Conan had hardly registered her reactions, but noted now that she still seemed much calmer than he. Again, he wondered how she managed to be so strong--but he had his own answer in the knowledge of what she had suffered through these last few years. Though she silently cried, she reached out to the two beside her, putting an arm around Conan's shoulder to keep him close, to help him keep his anger at bay.

"For what it's worth," Ai spoke again, at last, "I'm sorry."

The two young parents on the cot looked up at her at last, Conan glancing for an instant at Akai--who had not moved or changed throughout the entire drama. If anything, he looked merely bored and watchful, and that made Conan scowl. He turned his eyes back to Haibara, his face set with resolve and his mind burning with a single question.

"_Why?_"

"You already know that," Ai answered, swallowing hard.

Her answer only made him frown harder--but at least now he was not incoherent with rage. His mind functioned again, with the clarity he was familiar with and grateful for. "How could you put him in that kind of danger?" he demanded. "If my cure came at the price of his life and safety you know I would _never_--"

"I know you wouldn't." Ai managed to look up at last, barely, her eyes flicking over his and settling on the child in his lap. "But he's the only way. No cure I could ever make on my own would have worked. It's some kind of miracle--you made your own cure without ever realizing..."

Conan blinked. "What?"

"_Think_, Kudo-kun," she responded, sitting up a little straighter on her stool. "Yuuichi-kun ingested a complete adult dose of the apotoxin. But look at him--he's in perfect health."

His eyes twitched a millimeter narrower, and he glanced down at the small boy who once again rested against his chest, this time relaxed and alert.

Ran looked at him too, her own eyes widening with realization. "Haibara-chan...what are you getting at?" she asked, her first words after a long silence startling the one beside her. "If he could do that and still be okay, something must be..."

"APTX 4869 is in his system," Ai replied, marshalling herself to scientific detachment. "Just like it is in yours, Kudo-kun. It permeates every cell--and _I'm_ not the reason it got there. The blood tests I took before and after he ingested the toxin prove that."

Conan stared at her. "How...?"

"Because of _you_. I just told you that the toxin is still in your body--in _all_ of your cells." At last, Ai looked into his eyes for longer than a moment, longer than a glance. "When you fathered him, you passed _that_ to him as well."

"But...how could...?" The boy had gone pale at her words, looking down at his son once more. "How did he...?"

"How did he survive? I guess that's just part of his miracle," Ai replied with the faintest of smiles. "The apotoxin affects cells--by every rule of science I know, he should have died even as he was conceived. But he didn't. Somehow he worked around it, and thrived--and even kept the poison from affecting Mouri-chan through the placental exchange."

Eyes large, he glanced at Ran, who looked startled. Then he stared down at Yuuichi, who only blinked at him with wide-eyed innocence.

"He thrived, and survived--and it's his survival that makes it possible for me to finally create an antidote," Ai went on, still fixing them with her gaze. "Yuuichi-kun is immune to Apotoxin 4869. And through his immunity, there's a chance for a cure."

"He's...he's _immune?_" Conan asked softly, voice half-choked with mixed-up wonder, and fear. "How...?"

"He swallowed the dose I gave him and suffered a fever reaction," Ai told him, looking regretful. "But otherwise, APTX 4869 had no effect. His body can metabolize it into harmless components."

Once again, Conan stared down at the quiet boy in his arms, filled with something like awe. Awe at his son's survival and hidden gift--and gratitude that Yuuichi would never succumb to something that had devastated his own life.

And accompanying those feelings was a guilty regret that he had, even unknowingly, risked his child's life even as he'd helped create it, cursing him to forever carry that poison in his blood.

"I was hoping to create an antidote for you that would give you Yuuichi-kun's immunity," Ai said quietly, looking down again. "I never meant to endanger him at all. You know our situation, Kudo-kun...you know we're already in danger, all of us. But this is my only chance to make things right..."

Conan stared at her, several pieces beginning to fall into place. "Haibara..."

"I know it's my fault--I left, and you panicked...but if I hadn't, you'd never have used that last temporary antidote..."

"And...Yuuichi would never have been born," Ran whispered, covering her mouth. There were many things she regretted about what had happened back then--but one thing she would never regret was her son's life, or her love for him. Nor would she ever regret loving Shinichi...

"And if he wasn't," Ai went on, "there would be no cure now. It was such a perfect accident that it just has to be a miracle..."

At long, long last, Akai Shuichi cleared his throat. "There won't _be_ any miracles of any sort if you don't finish your work soon," he stated, voice low. He never moved, not once, but his eyes managed to pin each and every one of them, Ai included. "We don't have forever. We may not even have more than a couple of hours."

Akai's reminder jolted Conan's heart with a sharp icicle of fear. _They_ were still coming--coming for him, for his son...coming to kill them, or worse. He swallowed hard, his arms unconsciously tightening around Yuuichi even as Ran's arm held him even closer. "What can we do?" he asked, in a voice that seemed embarassingly small.

Akai's gaze turned back to him. "For one thing, you can settle down. Your repeated outbursts do nothing but slow everything down. Stay quiet, and stay out of the way, and once Haibara's work is finished we'll move. Anger and panic will accomplish nothing here."

Conan gulped again and nodded, slightly abashed. He was still angry at Haibara, at Akai--but the threat that loomed over them all superceded that. This whole evening had been, for him, filled with unprecedented loss of control, with rage like he'd seldom known in his life; though his feelings might have been justified--having his son all but kidnapped, and endangered by Ai's experimentation--his expression of those feelings had been more damaging than helpful.

Even Yuuichi had known that. Known it, and been frightened...

"It's not quite finished yet," Ai was saying, sitting up on her stool to fix him with her gaze. "I'm almost done, and then we'll all get out of here."

Akai glanced at her. "How long?"

Ai considered for a moment, frowning. "Maybe an hour. I'll try to make it less."

"Do it." Akai stood up from where he leaned against the table at her side, unfolding his arms. As both Conan and Ran opened their mouths to speak, he held up a hand and interrupted. "As much as I'm sure all of you still have things to discuss, we don't currently have the time. Your immediate questions are answered. Your child is unharmed, Haibara is seeing to the antidote, and for now you're safe."

Reluctantly, Conan kept his jaws clamped and nodded. However, Ran spoke up with concerns of her own. "What should we do until the time comes?"

"You should rest and prepare yourself to move quickly and quietly," Akai replied. "Mouri-san, the little one has been through a lot; he'll need looking after." He eyed Conan briefly. "And _you_--get some food and water, or you'll be in bad shape when we have to move."

At the mention of food, Conan's stomach decided to announce that it seconded that idea. Having nothing to eat since the morning, it was quite empty, and not at all pleased with that state of affairs. The hungry growl was rather audible, causing Conan to flush and drawing giggles from Yuuichi.

Ran smiled as well, and the small sound she made just _might_ have been a giggle of her own. "I think that's a very good idea. If I know your appetite--and I do--you're probably starving, 'Conan-kun.' Growing boy and all that." She ruffled Conan's hair in a way that made him flush even more and duck his head, grumbling.

Akai stepped forward, heading for the door. "Haibara needs to get back to work--it's been too long already. Just stay clear of the men and don't interfere with anything, and when it's time to go I'll notify you."

Ran nodded, her face settled into a slightly-pale determination that Conan well recognized--she was scared, but by God she was going to do whatever was necessary.

When she reached over to take Yuuichi from his arms, he found it was hard to let go. Both Ran and his son knew him now--_truly_ knew him for who he really was, and he had held his son in his arms and felt he belonged there, now more than ever.

Ran held Yuuichi close and stood up, carrying him after Akai as they headed for the door. Conan followed, feeling strangely cold. He already missed the warm weight of his son's small body in his arms.

Akai politely held the door for Ran as she stepped out. In the main room, the collection of soldiers looked up from whatever they were doing, curious and only slightly apprehensive. Many of them had spent the entire time wondering just what was going on behind the closed door.

"Mamoru--Daisuke--" Akai commanded, causing two of them to leap to their feet. "Get Mouri-san and the child a place to relax. A cot or a chair, whatever she wants."

"Hai!"

Almost as an afterthought, Akai gestured in the direction of Conan, who emerged from the door after Ran. "And get this boy some food before he falls over." He eyed the two men, who had drawn up rather hesitantly. "Well, move it!"

"Yessir!"

Conan gave Akai one glance as he exited the room--a sharp-eyed, edged glance that still spoke of guarded trust. But there was little time to express it, for Akai was already turning back to Ai's lab.

With the door shut behind him, he gazed down at the small blond-haired girl sitting still on her chair. "We don't have much time," he reminded her.

"I know." She didn't look up as she replied.

"He still doesn't trust us."

"He won't. Not for a long time. There are few people he really trusts, anyway."

"He doesn't even trust _you_."

"I've never given him a reason to," Ai retorted without venom, turning away to her desk. "I've betrayed him. I created the drug that ruined his life. When I left it almost destroyed him. I kidnapped his son. It'll take him longer to trust me than it will to trust you."

"You were...his friend."

Something in her face flinched with pain. "Barely that. And never anything more."

"Don't let that cloud your judgement now." His eyes darkened; he knew--had known for a very long time--her feelings for Kudo. He didn't like the pain it caused her--and more than that, he didn't like the reactions it brought out of him. "Whatever your feelings, you have a job to do. Whether for his sake, Mouri's sake, or the child's, you have to finish."

"I know that. My feelings have nothing to do with my work."

He stared at her for another moment more, his lips pressed into a thin, downward line. He didn't believe everything she said; he knew her too well--he knew her eyes, the darkness in them hiding the pain she felt. She hurt because she'd hurt _him_--and whether she realized it or not, she let herself be affected by how Kudo regarded her.

Finally, he turned to leave again, and as he opened the door he barely glanced over his shoulder. "Let's finish this."

Ai watched him go, watched the door close behind him. But most of her mind was occupied by Kudo-kun. Instead of Akai's retreating back, her mind's eye kept presenting her with her view of Conan's tousled hair and tense, narrow shoulders, noting the way he kept his hands fisted as he followed Ran...

He was worried. Afraid. They all were, but especially him. She could see it in every line of him--and yet, through his fear, his spark of dangerous determination remained, unquenchable. He was not going to give up so long as he still breathed--to protect Mouri-chan and Yuuichi-kun, he would do anything...

He was determined. And for him, she could do no less--could hold on no less strongly. She turned back to her computer and her samples, pushing all other thoughts from her mind and concentrating on the task at hand.

She had a job to do.

_to be continued_


	13. Part 12: Infinite Words I Could Say

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**AN:** _Sorry for the delay on this, minna-san. I'll be having a few difficulties in the near future, mostly related to some employment issues, so I'm not sure how things will go on any of my works. Gomen nasai!_

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_Nothing ever stops all these thoughts, and the pain attached to them.  
Sometimes I wonder why this is happening.  
It's like nothing I can do would distract me, when  
I think of how I shot myself in the back again.  
'Cause from the infinite words I could say, I  
Put all the pain you gave to me on display;  
But didn't realize, instead of setting it free, I  
Took what I hated and made it a part of me.  
_--Linkin Park, "Figure.09"

**Part 12: Infinite Words I Could Say**

Conan didn't know whether to be amused or perplexed by some of the looks he was getting from the soldiers in the common room. As he followed Ran after the two men Akai had ordered to help them, the rest of them eyed him from their various locations about the room; some went very still, no matter what they were doing. Others stared openly, almost gawking; still others even left their spots to move further away from him and Ran.

Given the situation, he wasn't sure if he should be gratified or offended.

As they came to the tables near the middle of the room, the two young men turned to their guests, glancing at each other uncomfortably. "Well, uh..." the brown-haired soldier began, trailing off almost instantly the moment he looked down at Conan.

His black-haired partner nudged him. "Food, idiot."

"Oh yeah..." the first mumbled awkwardly. "I guess I'll get something for you to eat, uh...Edogawa..."

Conan's stomach piped up in agreement a second time, causing him to redden faintly and Ran to smile. "Thanks," he murmured softly.

"Don't worry about me," Ran spoke up, still cradling Yuuichi on her hip. "I'll just stay here with Shinichi--I don't need a bed or anything. Um, your name was...Mamoru-san, right?"

The black-haired solder blinked at her and nodded. "Yeah. But the boss wants us to take care of you, Mouri-san--just let me know if there's anything I can get you."

Ran smiled. "Maybe just some hot tea, while Shinichi's eating."

The other man--apparently Daisuke--was already moving toward the small refrigerator in the kitchen-like setup against one wall. He poked his head into the little fridge and shuffled around a bit while Mamoru directed the young family to a clear spot at one of the tables--ironically, the same place Yuuichi had eaten earlier, the same place he had played cards with his many new friends.

"You all can spread out here," Mamoru told them with a shrug. "These tables are free since it's not chow time, and nobody'll bother you otherwise." He glanced uneasily at Conan, who watched Daisuke without noticing the look.

"Thank you, Mamoru-san," Ran replied with a smile, holding Yuuichi on her lap. The little boy rested against her easily, looking a bit tired, content just to observe the comings and goings around him.

Conan, however, kept an eye on the one fetching the food, his stomach complaining impatiently. As the wait continued, he left his spot at Ran's side and ventured around the table toward Daisuke. His eyes never left the brown-haired young soldier, though somehow his attention remained focused on Ran as well.

Daisuke had only managed to fetch one package of sandwich meat thus far, setting it on the narrow table beside the refrigerator. He went back in search of other sustenance, rueing the fact that they didn't have the opportunity to shop freely very often.

As if noting his lack of success, Yakamoto-san barely looked up from his radio monitoring. "Hey, genius--there's instant ramen in the boxes under the tables."

"Oh, okay..." Daisuke backed out of the fridge with a couple of foil-covered plates, turning to set them aside--

A pair of dark blue eyes at his elbow made him jump with a yelp, nearly dumping his finds in surprise. Edogawa Conan gazed up at him neutrally, quirking one eyebrow at his reaction as Daisuke stared at him in frozen apprehension.

"I'm not going to bite," said the boy, somewhat wryly.

"Uh, yeah..." The brown-haired soldier swallowed nervously and offered Conan one of the plates. "Um, I think this is some potstickers. Microwave's over there."

The line of Conan's mouth softened into a surprisingly disarming half-smile as he took the cold plate. "Thanks."

Daisuke stared after him as he headed for the small cooking unit, blinking confusedly.

Ran began to relax in her chair, a hot cup of tea in hand and Yuuichi trying not to fall into a doze in her lap. She took a deep breath, glad that at last things were settling down and moving at a more controllable pace; their torn little family was back together, their child was safe, Shinichi had a very hopeful possibility of a cure soon...

She was willing to let little things like impending doom slide for a while, just to stay in the here-and-now and thank God for what she had in this moment. The fact that their enemy was closing in on them had been pushed to the back of her mind for now; Shinichi had probably done the same for the sake of their peace and quiet--and to keep their own terror from frightening their son.

When the microwave completed its cook cycle, Conan drew the uncovered plate out and breathed in the heavenly aroma of re-heated potstickers. Heavens, he hadn't known how frantically _hungry_ he was until the scent of hot food hit his nose! Leaving the microwave hanging open, he all but scrambled back to his chosen chair beside Ran and--as she hid a giggle at his famished frenzy--began to eat with bare fingers, not bothering to wait and locate chopsticks or silverware.

He blew on hot food, and then on hot fingers, as Mamoru watched bemusedly. The black-haired operative risked a short chuckle--braver than Daisuke--and tossed a plastic fork in front of the boy. "Here you go, Edogawa. Don't choke yourself now."

Conan barely spared him a glance, instead offering the fork to Ran first. "Are you hungry?"

"I...I guess I am," Ran realized with a rueful smile; she'd had more to eat today than Conan, but had still not eaten well. "I'll just have a bite. Yuu-chan?"

Yuuichi shook his head, his action accompanied by an enormous pink-cheeked yawn. "Already ate," he reported sleepily.

"Are you tired?" Ran asked gently.

"Nuh-uh." In defiance of the yawn, the child shook his head emphatically. "I'm not sleepy."

It was quite typical of Yuuichi's independent nature; Conan chuckled softly and speared a potsticker for Ran, handing her the plastic fork. He went back to eating with his fingers, not really dwelling on how childish it was--desperate times, depserate measures and all that. But he did spare another muffled thankyou for Daisuke, who brought the other plate of heated egg rolls and a large glass of water.

"Here's some more if you want, Edogawa-san," the nervous operative offered. "We had some pizza, too, but it's kinda hairy now..."

That drew a laugh from the young not-child across the table--the first real laugh that anyone in the room had heard from him; it was a clear, merry sound, almost contagious, and it made his face look remarkably like Yuuichi's. "Thanks," Conan replied at length, "but I think I'll pass on the penicillin pizza."

At last, Daisuke was able to crack a faint smile. Maybe this Edogawa...Kudo...whoever...wasn't so bad after all...

Akai Shuichi stepped silently out of Haibara's office, his expression set stern and dark as he strode toward his usual corner. And suddenly Conan wasn't laughing any more; he went cold and quiet and wary-eyed as he watched their commander take up his customary position overseeing the room. Swallowing hard, Daisuke found himself drawing back a bit--all of a sudden Edogawa was that ice-edged, dangerous not-child once more, and he didn't want to be anywhere in range if the guy went off like a firebomb again.

Then Conan glanced back up at him, making poor nervous Daisuke catch his breath--but the ice and threat was gone, and his gaze was almost friendly as the strange, _strange_ boy went back to eating as if nothing had happened.

Conan didn't _quite_ snort as he continued to eat; really, the way some of the men in this little private army acted, one would think he was about to bite someone's head off, literally--the apparently rather skittish Daisuke being one of them. But considering the first impression he'd made with these people, it was less than surprising; that had _not_ been a pleasant introduction. Inwardly, Conan winced; he'd been half out of his mind, then--not thinking straight at all and ready to rip violently through anything that got in his way...

He could count on one hand the number of times in his life he'd gone _that_ crazy. That kind of loss of control wasn't like him, and in hindsight it was no wonder half of this little troop was all but terrified of him. Daisuke, who was apparently a shy sort, but helpful and amiable, seemed nearly his own age--his _real_ age, anyway--as opposed to Mamoru, who appeared to be perhaps approaching thirty. It was hard to imagine the open-faced, timid-looking young man in a real combat situation, but he was apparently some sort of soldier if he was in with this group.

Conan wasn't quite aware of it, but his face would darken noticeably every time he sent a wary glance Akai's way; he kept a cautious eye on the silent older man--who in turn was keeping a very definite watch on Conan himself. The constant gaze made him uneasy; his internal "threat alert"--which usually went off when something dangerous was stalking him--kept pinging at him and keeping him on-edge. He did not like that man's direct, calculating stare.

Mamoru and Daisuke had taken up their own chairs near the table, hovering while trying not to look like it; Conan polished off both plates of food gratefully, smoothly ignoring the wary stares and occasional murmurs that still floated around--as well as refusing to react to Akai's dark gaze. Ran watched him finish all that food, fatigued and amused, while Yuuichi dozed in her lap, curled against her chest.

"That feels better," Conan sighed quietly, leaning back in his chair and scrubbing at his sticky fingers with a paper towel. "You sure you don't need anything more, Ran?"

Ran shook her head. "I'm fine, honest. I'm not that hungry, just...tired. And really, _really_ glad we're all together...and safe..."

"For now," he agreed with a deep, weary breath. "Yeah."

Shadows flicked across Ran's rather pale face. "We'll be okay," she whispered, her arms holding Yuuichi fractionally tighter. After a moment or two, she glanced briefly around, taking a deep breath in an attempt to restore normalcy. "You know...I should probably call my parents to let them know we're okay--we've been in an uproar all day, and Otousan and Okaasan will want to know what's going on."

"Yeah..." Conan sighed yet again. "But it's not a good idea now--remember? The phones are probably tapped. I'm sure once we get to whatever safe location these guys are whisking us off to, there'll be some way for you to get a message to them safely..." He trailed off, noticing Ran blinking at him. "What?"

"I just...you were..." Stumbling a bit, Ran her face turned down as if she were about to tear up again. "I'm sorry. I hear Conan-kun's voice, like always, but you still sound so much like..._you_. And I never realized. But...every time I remember, I catch my breath. You're really _here_."

Conan looked down as well, staring at the balled-up napkin in his hands. He didn't quite know what to say to that; after all of his lying and hiding, she was still here and she wasn't angry--she hadn't yet put him through a wall or told him to get out of her life...

"You were always here," she went on, musing. "You know, I always clung to the promise of the next phone call...I hung on to that day after day, for years..."

Conan winced, picking at the wrinkled napkin in silence. "I know. I saw."

"Even when sometimes I thought you were never coming back, but you always promised you would..." She looked up at him again, but he couldn't meet her gaze. "_Why?_ You could have left...you didn't have to keep up that pretense. You were right there...why did you even call?"

"I...I just wanted to _talk_ to you," he replied, in a small voice. "Really talk to you...and Yuu-kun...the way Conan can't. Even if it was wrong...and I kept dragging you along waiting for something that could never be..."

Ran offered a smile. "But it could be, now," she reminded him. "Haibara-chan...has a cure that might work."

"Yeah, she does," he responded, brightening with a faint, shaky laugh. "I almost can't believe she's actually been working on this all the time she was gone. After so many years...I'd pretty much given up hope of ever getting back to normal. But still..." He finally worked up the courage to meet her eyes. "...I wanted to stay with you, Ran. To...to help...any way I could. Even if a kid can't do much...I-I just wanted to..." He swallowed hard, his gaze flicking to the sleeping child in Ran's lap. "I can't leave you or Yuuichi. I _can't_."

She reached out with her free arm to touch him comfortingly, gentle fingers brushing through his tousled bangs and down his cheek--different, now; slow, tender, almost as if he were the man he wanted to be. "I'm glad you didn't," she told him firmly. "Even with everything we've both been through...with all the circumstances...I'm glad you didn't go. Even when I thought you were Conan-kun, you always..."

She was tearing up again, drawing back that free hand to wipe at her eyes with a self-deprecating laugh. "I'm just glad you were around, no matter how it was. I'd never have survived without you. _Both_ of you," she asserted with a chuckle. "Conan-kun's help and Shinichi's encouragement."

Conan managed to crack a little smile--just a _little_ one--at the sound of her soft laughter. "At least I was a bit useful."

"And you always seemed to call right when I needed it," Ran went on, with another laugh--as if using that good humor to fight off the tears. "Just when things were at their worst and I really needed to hear your voice..." She paused, thoughtful. "Wait, you're...you're still _small_--how did you ever manage to talk to me and sound like...well...you?"

"I...had a few accomplices, actually," Conan admitted. "One of them made me a handy little voice-changer for any time I needed to sound like the old me. _Older_ me," he corrected with a nervous laugh. "I'd just turn on the right voice, call you up..." He paused mid-sentence, going wide-eyed. "Call...!"

Ran went tense, startled. "Co...Shinichi?"

The sound of his true name startled him a bit--he was still unused to hearing it. "Oh--oh, crud! The phone--Hattori! I left him waiting out there, dammit--oh, sorry Ran..." Looking worried, contrite, and sheepish all in the same moment, the young not-boy wriggled about to fetch his small phone from his pocket and open it up. Some of the soldiers nearby looked on curiously, but no one offered to stop him.

"Hattori-kun's here?" Ran asked, surprised.

"He gave me a lift," Conan responded half-absently, poking in a command to speed-dial a particular number. "When I really needed it. He's...well, he's the cavalry," the boy informed her wryly. "But this place...isn't what I was expecting--plans have changed--"

The phone on the other end rang once--and almost not even that; the ring was truncated as someone picked up in a hurry.

"Kudo? Oi, Kudo, is that you?" demanded an anxious-sounding Hattori Heiji.

"Yeah, it's me--"

"_Ahou!_" Heiji exploded, loudly enough that Conan almost had to hold the phone away from his ear. "What took you so long? I was just about to come in there and _rescue_ your scrawny ass! What the _hell's_ going on in there?"

"Look--hey, I'm sorry, I forgot--" Conan tried to explain. From the rather amused look on Ran's face, she could obviously imagine what was being said even if she couldn't hear it. The nearby men just looked confused or concerned.

"Forgot? Hell!" Heiji stormed on. "You call me up outta the blue to say your kid is missin', then we get a lead and _you_ go off like the Lone Ranger, prob'ly neck-deep in trouble, an' expect _me_ to just sit out here an' twiddle my thumbs--!"

"Listen--Hattori, listen to me--" He had to raise his voice somewhat to be heard, but finally succeeded in getting the irate young man's attention. "I'm okay. Ran's okay--and Yuuichi's here too. We're all fine, but we don't have a lot of time--the Blacks are probably coming right now. Look, it's not what we thought it was...there's some major things going on, and we're kind of in the middle of it."

"Like what?" Heiji snapped. "What's going _on_ in there, Kudo?"

"There's...some people here that are apparently going to help us," Conan replied, his tones beginning to slip back into "professional mode" as he explained. "So we've got some backup, for now. The three of us are okay here, and..."

"Tell him hello for me," Ran interjected in a stage whisper, her eyes glimmering with mirth.

"Oh, and Ran says hi. And I almost forgot--Haibara's here too."

Hattori was silent for a beat. "No way--Haibara Ai? That little blonde girl who was really...?"

"The same one. This is her group," Conan informed his friend, unconsciously beginning to grin, "and you won't believe this--Haibara's working on a cure right now, one that might really work--"

"A _cure_. You're shitting me."

"I'm dead serious."

"Holy cow..."

"No kidding," Conan responded, grinning widely and grimly now. "No guarantees it'll really work, and it might even kill me, but...God, this is the first time in so long..."

"Aw, jeeze...it's like the whole thing's busted loose, Kudo--missin' kids, secret hideouts, long-lost little girls, cures..." There was another moment of silence on the other end as Heiji struggled to assmiliate all the new information. "Shit--you be careful, Kudo. If they're coming--hell, if that cure might even kill you--"

"Don't even bother." Conan cut him off sharply, ignoring the worry in Ran's eyes. "I'm willing to risk it."

"Dammit... Listen, do you want me to come in and back you up? I can be there in five or less--I'm still right where I was when you left."

"No...Hattori..." Conan took a deep breath, lowering his voice even more. "I'd like to have at least one ally in the clear if this goes bad. So...can you wait for me there a little longer? I still might need that cavalry later on..."

"Sure...but...shit, you watch your back, hear me?" his friend demanded. "You got Neechan an' the chibi right there in the middle with you--you take care of 'em or I'll kick your ass."

"Yeah, I know," Conan replied ruefully. "And...thanks, Hattori. I owe you for this."

"Damn _straight_ you do," Heiji growled, but Conan could hear the smile in the other's voice, well as the concern.

"I'll call you the minute anything changes, okay?"

"You do that. Later, Kudo."

"Bye..." With a faint _beep_, the line was closed. Conan sat still for a few moments, aware that Ran was watching him.

"I thought we weren't supposed to call anyone," she stated softly, worry warring with faint disappointment in her tone. "You said..."

"I know," he replied, contrite. "And I'm sorry...we _can't_ call your folks, or mine, or the police. All those land-lines could be tapped--and cell phones are especially easy to--"

"Isn't _that_ a cell phone?" Ran demanded quietly, gesturing at the small unit, still open, in his hand.

"Sort of..." Conan looked vaguely abashed. "It's got some, er, _special features_ that ordinary phones don't have. The Black Organization can't tap it through normal channels, and even if they _could_ uncover the signal carrier, it's been heavily encrypted and would take them hours to break or trace..."

His voice was low, so that it wouldn't carry far--at least to the ears of the group of soldiers--but Ran heard every word, confusion and comprehension sharing equal portions of her expression. "So why can't I call my parents?"

"Because at some point, the signal would have to intersect with a conventional line, and then _they_ would have it," he explained. "And even if they couldn't trace this end, they could listen to the conversation--and I'd really rather they not get any more information than they already do." He watched her face fall even further and reached out to touch her hand. "Ran..."

"I understand," she sighed, disappointed but not angry. "I guess Hattori-kun has another phone like that, doesn't he? How did you get them?"

"The Professor made them for me," Conan replied with a shrug. "It's pretty useful, but kind of limited when you can only share the encrypted signal with the three other units. We can only give them to people we can trust completely."

"Hattori-kun, Professor Agasa, and..." She blinked. "Who's the other?"

Conan paused, wary-eyed. "A friend."

"But..." He could almost see whe wheels turning in her head, before her eyes widened. "Masaka! But he's--"

"_Shhh!_" The not-child's hiss cut her off sharply, his eyes darting to and fro around the stranger-filled room. "Not here," he warned, a breath of a whisper. "It's a final line of defense. No one else needs to know about it."

Her eyes were bright with worry, but she said no more, nodding briefly.

"It's okay," he assured her softly, offering a tiny, definite smile. "I'd trust him with my life. Heck, I already have." His voice dropped even further as he leaned closer. "He's the one who helped me find you."

Ran said nothing, but her expression changed subtly to surprise and understanding. With a little smile of her own, she nodded again, relaxing once more. Yuuichi barely shifted in her arms, still comfortably asleep and unworried.

Conan sighed again, leaning back in his chair, glancing at Mamoru and Daisuke--who were both trying hard not to look curious. There was so much more he wanted to say, so many things to tell Ran; _years_ of things he wanted--_needed_ to say. But they were in a room full of men who were only tenuous allies at best and friendly captors at worst, stuck in a situation that could quickly turn sour--and what he had to say to Ran was for her alone.

A flash of resentment burned through him briefly, at the thought that Akai had sent Mamoru and Daisuke to spy on him. None of it reached his face.

Akai was still watching him from across the room, anyway. Expression unchanged, the dark-haired man still fixed him with that burning, calculating stare--and Conan did _not_ like the feeling he was getting from it. Haibara might have come forward and been honest--or as honest as she _could_ be, given the circumstances--and most of the soldiers seemed forthcoming, but Akai Shuichi remained a dangerous enigma.

Conan had seen that kind of look before. There was an agenda behind that expressionless face--things that he and Ran had not been told. Akai was a powerfully cunning man--of that Conan was certain; how else could he have kept this small band of men alive in the face of the untold might of the Black Organization? How else could he have infiltrated the FBI, the police force, and perhaps even the ranks of their enemy?

And what sort of deeds would that kind of cunning demand?

Even if this little private army was supposedly their only chance of survival...perhaps it was better to face the devil he knew than the devil he didn't.

And he didn't know Akai.

But at the moment, there was nothing he could do. Hattori was right; Ran and Yuuichi were involved in this right alongside him, and he would _not_ see them endangered just because he--uncharacteristically--felt like starting a fight. Which, without a reasonable cause--his logical mind informed him tartly--would amount to little more than a pissing contest of wills and intelligence, and would serve no useful purpose now.

_After the cure,_ Conan told himself, letting his blue gaze shift to a glare that matched Akai's. _After all of this, when Ran and Yuuichi are safe, out of **Their** reach...and I can look him straight in the eye. Then we'll see who's pushing who around._

* * *

Time passed. Haibara's door remained closed; no one went in or out, and nothing could be heard from within. Ran, weary from the long, arduous day, finally decided to take a brief rest on a cot that Daisuke shyly offered her, and was soon sleeping quietly with Yuuichi cradled beside her. Soldiers came and went in shifts, quietly performing their duties and keeping a respectful distance from their guests. Akai continued to watch, silent.

Conan sat in a chair he'd pulled up beside Ran's cot. He was even more exhausted than Ran, but did not allow himself the luxury of sleep; at best, he existed in a strange sort of waking doze, his eyes at half-mast as he slumped in the chair with his arms folded across his chest. Whenever anyone moved too close, or Akai shifted position, he would snap awake, blue eyes bright and wary--then, failing any threatening circumstances, he would drift back into his half-asleep state, drowsy but alert.

Perhaps it had been more than an hour, perhaps less; no one was really counting any more--tension and tiredness having long since eaten away at the clock-checking and foot-tapping, transforming it to bored, edgy suspense consumed with staring into space or cleaning weapons. Everyone save the sleeping pair simply waited in silence for _something_ to happen; if even a small object was dropped on the floor it seemed like a gunshot, and when somebody coughed, everyone jumped.

Everyone, that is, except Akai. He still waited in his corner, watching, his cold presence preventing Conan from ever truly relaxing.

Maybe an hour _had_ passed; maybe more, maybe less. The sound of the office door opening was like an alarm going off.

Conan was the first on his feet. The various soldiers lingering around the room looked up, anticipatory, along with Daisuke and Mamoru, and the abrupt shuffle of movement woke Ran from her catnap. She sat up, growing slightly pale as she saw the reason for everyone's attention; a long-awaited emergence that portended both good and ill. Hope or damnation.

Haibara Ai stood in the doorway of her lab, looking tired and drained but suffused with victory. Her weary eyes met Conan's, and she managed a smile despite a faint glimmer of tears. She spoke softly, but it was loud in the stillness of so many breaths being held.

"_I did it_."

And Conan's breath went out in a shaky rush, his eyes huge with gratitude and joy and the lingering disbelief that there could be a cure--there _was_ a cure--after so long, so many years of hopeless pain and endless grief...

"Touchan's medicine is done?" asked a small voice, and Conan glanced back, surprised to see that Yuuichi was awake as well.

Ai sighed, running a hand over somewhat-disheveled hair as she stepped forth from the lab. She seemed a little shaky, a little red-eyed, as if perhaps she'd been crying before she came out. "Yes," she answered the little boy, though her eyes remained on Conan. "It's done. We can...begin at any time."

Yuuichi was a bit sleepy-looking, but his smile was bright. "Yay! Niichan, now you can take medicine and get better!"

Conan swallowed hard, nodding.

Ran was glad as well, somehow, but more than that she was frightened--the cure might be worse than the apotoxin; the medicine itself could be as lethal as any poison. Instead of merely wounding him, it might _kill_ him...and she couldn't bear to lose him--not after they'd come through so much and only just found each other again.

"Shinichi..."

His eyes flicked from Yuuichi to her. "Ran...I...I know how you feel, and there's a lot of risk involved, but--"

"Don't." Her eyes were growing as tear-filled as Ai's had been--perhaps more--and she spoke earnestly despite being quite aware of all the people around them, of the young blond girl who watched with pain-filled eyes. She was happy for him--happy for the possibility...but now, with the final countdown looming so close at hand and the bitter chance he might die from the very thing that could save him...she didn't want him to go.

"Don't do it..._please_," she begged. "Shinichi...I'd rather wait _another_ four years than risk losing you now. Please--if something goes wrong...if it doesn't work and you...you..." She took a gulp of a breath and tried to finish. "You'd be gone for _real_...forever...Shinichi, _please_..."

He closed his eyes, a lump rising in his throat at the pleading in her voice, forcing him to fight for the breath to speak. "I know...I know..." he replied, his voice going rough. "But...I have to try. Ran...I'm not Shinichi--not yet...and I want to be him again, for you, and for..."

He trailed off, painfully, glancing at the small, wide-eyed child beside her--the precious little boy who had only just tonight looked him in the eyes and called him _Touchan_. "I...I can't..._be_ like this any more, Ran...I _can't_...please understand...I don't want to leave you alone, but I can't live like _this_. Not when there's...finally a _chance_ I can be...the man you need me to be."

"Shinichi..." She reached for him, coming off the cot to embrace him, not caring who was watching. She wished she could hold on to him forever, keep him from going...the pain in his eyes just then... "You are...you _are_," she insisted, holding him as tight as she dared. "You always have been...Shinichi, you don't have to do this--I love you...no matter what..."

"It'll be okay, Ran," he told her, wrapping his arms around her waist--his current lack of height only serving to emphasize his need for the cure. He wanted more than anything to be able to enfold her in his arms, to hold her warmly and kiss all her tears away. "Even if...something happens to me...Haibara will make sure they take care of you..." It was said half to reassure her, half to reassure himself; he pulled back to look up into her tearful eyes, attempting his old confident grin. "But nothing will happen. I'll be fine."

"You don't _know_ that--"

"These past few years, I've had to learn to take a lot of things on faith." His smile softened, full of memories both joyful and sad. "It'll be okay, Ran. It _has_ to be."

"Shinichi..." There was no arguing with him, no stopping him when he was this determined to put something to rights--no matter how strongly she held on. And she knew that--he'd always been this way, ever since she could remember; Conan or Shinichi, once he decided to see something through, he would forge on to the end, no matter what. Choking back a real sob, she pulled him close again--just held on tight, in case it was the last time she ever _could_...

Then she had to let go; he was stepping back, putting on a confident smile and turning to face Yuuichi. "Hey, Yuu-kun, gimme a hug for luck, huh?" he cajoled, his tone light, hiding the fear and possibility.

"Yup!" The little boy eagerly hopped off of the cot and threw his arms around his brother/father/best friend. Conan pulled him just as close, squeezing him briefly, closing his eyes and holding the child just a few moments too long. Not just wrapping his arms around the boy like a big brother--enfolding him, embracing him as a _father_, eyes closed and cheek pressed into soft dark hair, as if to surround his child with all the love and warmth that was in him to give...

Ran realized, then, that he was not blithely walking into potential death. He knew--he _knew_. He understood the possibility just as starkly as she did--that this could be the last time he saw her, or Yuuichi; that this could be the last time he held his son. _He knew_.

But he was holding out the hope, the last raw faith, that Haibara's cure would work.

Finally, Conan released the little boy and stood back, looking down at him with tender deep eyes that betrayed the shadows of apprehension and behind his cheerful smile. "I love you, Yuu-kun. Remember that, okay? _Always_ remember I love you."

Slightly puzzled, Yuuichi nevertheless nodded. "Yeah--love you too, Niichan. Touchan."

"Thanks, scamp." He ruffled the boy's hair, then looked up at Ran. He couldn't say much more than he had; they both knew--there was so much still unsaid, so much left between them, but not enough time. But he didn't need to say how much he loved her; she knew that, too--had known for a long time. It was something that went far deeper than words, much further than anything he could merely say. It was in his eyes, in his mask of a smile, in his shaking hands. It was in her tears, in the weakness in her legs, in the pounding of her heart.

"Stay here, Ran. Please." There was a trace of entreaty in his voice now; if something went wrong, she wouldn't have to see. He wanted to spare her the sight of awful possibility. "Stay and...take care of Yuuichi. It'll be finished soon..."

She only nodded, nearly as white-faced as she had been at the beginning. She did not sob, or shout, or protest; only the tears running in silent streams down her cheeks betrayed the agony of her heart.

Then Conan turned to face Haibara Ai, who had been the nexus of so many of his life's problems--and now, would perhaps be the center of solving so many of them. "Let's do this," he said firmly. "The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we get my family to safety."

Ai nodded wordlessly, and beckoned him into the lab. The others looked on, silently--all of them, even the oblivious Eiji and the unconcerned Yakamoto. Ran lifted her son into her arms and held him close, more to comfort herself than the boy; she could only watch as the one she loved walked away from her again--and this time, perhaps _forever_.

Conan's mask of a smile vanished when he and Ai passed the threshold of the makeshift lab. "So, Haibara," he began, almost nonchalantly, though there was an undercurrent of steel in his voice. "Right about now I'm _really_ hoping this cure does what you made it to do."

She glanced at him sadly, ironically. "Me too. But my last major invention didn't exactly do what I made it to do; if it did, we wouldn't be standing here."

"Then let's just hope you've improved with practice," he responded with equal irony, almost turning to close the door--but pausing briefly. "Haibara...I want you to promise me...if this does go south...Ran and Yuuichi--"

She was already nodding. "I swear. By my sister's memory...I promise I'll see to it they're safe. For good."

He relaxed, just barely. "Thank you."

The door closing sharply made them both jump, Conan's nerves jangling with the fact that he'd been so focused on Haibara's promise that he hadn't seen Akai Shuichi walk right up behind them.

And he really, _really_ didn't want this man poking around while this was happening. "What do you want?" he all but snapped.

"Since the chemical is complete," Akai announced darkly, "and since you're apparently finished with the melodramatics, we can get down to discussing business."

"Business?" Conan's eyes narrowed, as perplexed as he was resentful. "What business? If you mean getting us out of here soon, it can wait until after--"

"I'm afraid this can't wait," Akai interrupted, not sounding apologetic at all. "This is about compensation for goods and services."

"What?" Ai demanded, eyes gone uncharacteristically wide. "Akai, what are you talking about?"

"What he _means_," Conan stated, his voice dropped to nearly a growl, "is what does he get in exchange for giving me that cure of yours."

Ai's gaze flicked from Conan to Akai. "That's preposterous. I never agreed to any conditions. This is _my work_, Akai. I'm doing this for them, not--"

Before she could take more than a step, Akai interposed himself between the girl and the desk where the precious medicine lay. "This is _my_ squad," he informed her coolly. "My men, my supplies, my orders. We either reach an agreement, or I'll take my '_business_' elsewhere."

Ai glared at him, angrier than Conan had ever seen her. "This is ridiculous! I didn't make this cure to blackmail him, Akai! I didn't even do it for _you--!_"

"It's simple enough," Akai interrupted again, as if he hadn't heard her. "Everything or nothing, Kudo."

Once more, Conan flinched at the name, but remained unmoving. "Alright. Fine. Tell me what you want, Akai."

"You," the operative replied, not batting an eye.

Conan, on the other hand, blinked hugely. "_What?_"

"Akai, _no_--" Haibara gasped, comprehension paling her features.

"The deal is very simple, Kudo," Akai went on, again ignoring Ai's horror. "You join us, you work for us, you help us take out the Black Organization--and in return, I let you make use of this cure, help you protect your family, and make sure you survive tonight's...difficulties."

"So either I do what you want, or you'll dump us on a street corner to fend for ourselves?" Conan all but snarled at him, once again becoming the hell-eyed "little monster" Akai had tried--and _failed_--to stare down in the entryway below. "That's a hell of a demand in return for something that's not even proven to work!"

Akai shrugged, maddeningly unconcerned. "Not my problem. It's easy enough for my troops and I to pull up and leave right now--we'd be out well clear of our enemy, especially minus the extra weight."

"When you put it that way I'm tempted to walk out of here right now!" Conan shot back, bristling. Bottled rage boiled against being threatened so, against being so close and yet denied _again_ his cure, at the thought of his family placed in danger for nothing more than a _deal_. "Screw your little private army--and your cure! At this point anything would be better than staying here!"

"That's not an option either, Kudo," Akai responded flatly.

"Akai, stop this--you _can't_--" Haibara tried again, growing agitated at the animosity radiating from Conan. She had not _seen_ what he had been downstairs, when he'd thought he was fighting for his life and the lives of his loved ones...and it was beginning to unnerve her.

But Conan had already paused, fixing Akai with a piercing blue stare. For long moments, he was silent, analyzing, his discerning gaze seeming almost to pass right through the dark-haired man.

"You never intended to let us go, did you?" he asked quietly, at length, his tones barely more than a raw, sharp razor blade. "You planned this from the very _beginning_. To lure me here--to hold my family hostage for your--"

"Don't mistake me for some common thug," Akai retorted, something angry gleaming in the depths of his eyes. "This isn't about your kid _or_ your woman, Kudo. This isn't even about me and my troops. I have orders."

Conan's eyes narrowed yet again, while Haibara gasped.

"They...those..." she nearly stuttered. "They wanted _him_--all this time, that's what this was for? The funding, the cure--everything...they used me as _bait?_"

"We're all tools," Akai replied--and Conan recognized the source of the tall man's anger. "Our superious just decided they wanted a new one, that's all. Those are my orders, Kudo." He glanced at Conan again, his eyes dark but somehow not cruel. "I have to make you one of us, or I have to make sure you _don't_ become one of _them_."

"So you're still going to hold the cure--hold my family _hostage_--"

Akai's jaw tightened. "If it were our enemy, they'd be doing the same thing--except they'd be doing it with very large guns pointed at your child. Or they'd just kill you, and use him, as you've been told."

Conan's teeth were bared in a near-feral snarl. "So you decide to make me choose the lesser of two evils, huh? What if I tell you to go to hell?"

"I was ordered to see that you join us, or I have to prevent the enemy from using you." His gaze held Conan's unflinchingly. "By any means necessary."

Haibara gasped again, visibly jerking, while Conan's face went slack with realization. "You...you'd kill me...just for...?"

"Being a commander means making the shitty decisions," Akai told him quietly, unwavering. "I'll never be famous, or appreciated for the judgement calls I make. But I have to make them--I have to decide who lives and who dies. This is a war, Kudo--the longest, most silent war the world has never seen. And if I have to choose...as a commander, I choose _one_ death--_your_ death--rather than the hundreds of deaths _they_ would force you to cause."

Conan swallowed hard, his face pale though his expression remained angry.

"Do you know what they can make you do," Akai went on more softly, his eyes flashing dark and hateful, "just by hurting someone you love?"

Conan's jaw tightened briefly, his eyes flashing a deep, abiding rage--but his face didn't change. "What makes _your_ side any better?"

Suddenly, Akai glanced away. "Not much," he allowed, a faint touch of angry irony in his tone. "Except that most of the people we recruit are in this to make people's lives _better_, and to save others from the Black Organization's terror and control. Most of them are like _you_­--already wounded by our enemy, and looking for a way to stop them. If our leadership gets any delusions of grandeur, they know that over sixty percent of our forces would turn on them."

"At least they have to stay honest," Conan snorted derisively.

"And to _be_ honest," Akai continued, "wouldn't you rather be working with us, _against_ the Black Organization's plans--than be forced to work for them and have your...unique talents put to destructive use? I've already told you what will happen if they catch up with you."

Conan looked down.

"You _know_ why they want you," Akai stated. It was not a question, though there was question in Akai's voice--perhaps he himself didn't even fully know why. "Don't you?"

The boy shrugged vaguely. "Same reason your boss wants me, I guess."

Inside, Ai felt her heart wring painfully. If and when their superiors found out about her data results with Yuuichi...

Akai finally crossed his arms and leaned back against the table with an impatient sigh. "Look, I'm not trying to be the bad guy here, Kudo. I'm trying to help you." _That_ admission looked like it pained him. "You have to join us, or you've got no options. And I'm not willing to risk you falling into enemy hands. There are too many lives at stake here."

"You make it sound like it's some kind of Cold War--"

"It _is_ a freaking war, Kudo," Akai snarled, growing uncharacteristically irate. "And to _them_, you're another weapon they can take and use. It's a war and you've _seen_ it, for God's sake. How many homes burned and buildings blown up? How much evidence destroyed, and blame laid in the wrong place? How many people have _died?_"

With each inquiry, Conan's small hands fisted tighter. "I...am _not_ a weapon," he finally said, in a small, thin, wire-taut voice, head down. "I don't want to be used--not by anyone. I'm tired of secrets and lies. I just..want to go _home_..."

"Akai, please," Ai begged, her voice catching painfully. "Let this go--just let him go...we can tell them something, right? We can't do this now--there isn't _time_--"

"There isn't. They could be right outside the doors."

Conan jerked visibly. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Because it's the right thing to do."

"_Is_ it?"

Blue eyes bored into Akai's dark ones, and the older man barely flinched. For long moments--uncountable heartbeats--there was tense, black silence. For a brief eternity, the two measured each other, weighing their options--Akai the likelihood of gaining cooperation, Conan his chances of surviving the Black Organization attack and keeping Ran and Yuuichi out of danger all on his own. Neither were very good.

Giving in would mean an end to his freedom, Conan knew; not that he was ever very free in the first place--but to be at the beck and call of some secret army he'd never even _heard_ of until tonight... It rubbed him all the wrong way, especially with the realization that, to the leaders of this so-called _good_ organization, he was just another tool, and his cure was nothing more than bait--along with his family. What kind of "good" was that?

But he could not safeguard Ran and Yuuichi alone--that much was certain. Not with the enemy so close on their trail, with no time to hide or prepare. And with Akai's promise to leave him dead should he not agree...he couldn't even say for sure if his family would continue to be safe if he refused. If Akai decided that a woman and child were just dead weight, and to keep Yuuichi out of enemy hands...

**_No_**.

He really didn't have a lot of options to begin with--and with every passing second, they grew fewer. If it were just himself, it would be simple--but he _would not_ put Ran or Yuuichi in any kind of danger, no matter what sacrifices he himself had to make. Even if it meant losing his cure forever--even if it meant his very _life_.

At the moment, he couldn't see any other way out--no other way to save them. Akai and his band of soldiers were their first best chance to escape alive--and the dark-eyed, dark-faced commander would _only_ help him if he agreed.

At last, his thin shoulders slumped. "Alright," he said, barely a whisper, becoming the very picture of near-childish defeat.

Unbeknownst to the rest, Akai's shoulders relaxed a bit as well, as he let out the breath he'd been holding. "We have an arrangement, then?"

The boy closed his eyes, weary and angry. "I'll do it. _If_ I survive the cure..."

"I'm sure you will," Akai stated, standing up and letting his arms fall. "I have quite a bit of faith in Haibara's skills."

Her eyes glistened, but Ai was not taken by the praise--she was still hurt, and utterly outraged that her earnest work had been used as a cruel snare. "And now _if_ you'll excuse us," she snapped curtly, in a tone that promised a full fury later, "we have a procedure to finish."

"Get it done," Akai told her, heading for the door. "I'll get the others packing. Once you're sure he's stable, we'll be gone within twenty minutes. Don't delay."

"Get out of my lab," she bit out coldly.

"Akai."

Conan's whip-sharp voice stopped the man in his tracks, his hand on the doorknob. "Yes?" he replied.

"I won't be anybody's puppet," the boy warned, his tone jaded--but carrying a dangerous undercurrent. If getting Ran and their son out of this place alive and unharmed meant playing along with Akai and whoever his bosses were...well, he could play.

Contrary to the belief of many, he was an old hand at dangerous games.

"We're all puppets in this, Kudo," Akai responded, not looking back. "We're all tools."

"_I'm_ not," Conan stated, that faint hint of menace still lurking deep within. "When this is all over...don't forget, _you're_ the one who wouldn't let me go. _You_ forced me into this. Remember that."

Akai still did not look back. He stood there, very still, for long moments. Then, without reply, he finally left the lab. He moved quickly, and closed the door very firmly behind himself.

_to be continued_


	14. Part 13: The Beginning or the End

_**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Detective Conan or any of its characters and concepts! They all belong to the genius of Gosho Aoyama. Except for Yuuichi--he's mine! No touchie!_

**AN:** _Moving, new job, moving again, looking for another job...ah, Real Life..._

**Coming Home**  
_by Becky Tailweaver_

_All in just a moment my whole life passed before me;  
In just that time it left me cold and numb.  
Lying in the darkness like there's nowhere else to be,  
Wondering if there's nothing more to come,  
Curiosity compels me and I open up my eyes;  
Like another day the night is gone again.  
The natural conclusion I'm about to realize:  
This is the beginning or the end.  
_--Clint Black, "Wake Up Yesterday"

**Part 13: The Beginning or the End**

Conan sat on the lab chair that Ai directed him to. Although he was holding on to the hope that this would work, that this was really a cure, he still had doubts--as evidenced by the noticeable paleness of his features and the faint trembling in his hands. He could be walking out of the hell he'd been living in the last few years--or he could be walking willingly into his own death.

Either way, anything to do with the apotoxin process was always hurt like hell.

Ai's hands were shaking too, even as she kept her face businesslike and _tried_ to make her breathing even. She hopped up to her own chair and began to prepare her supplies, small glass items clinking faintly and computer printouts shuffling.

"I think I've managed to convince myself this is okay," Conan finally announced quietly, wryly. "But...how about you, Haibara? Are you alright with this?"

Her hands stilled for a moment. "I'm not sure," she admitted with an ironic chuckle. "Once again, I've manufactured something that could kill you. And everyone has a lot of faith in me, considering everything I've..."

"Hey..." Conan leaned forward briefly. "I know...I was really mad at you...and I guess there's still some things that we haven't worked out, but...I think I'm starting to understand why you did what you did. Most of it, anyway." He offered a faint smile. "I've been forgetting that I'm not the only one who's been through some hell these past few years. All that aside, I'd like to think...we're still friends, right? At least a little, for old times' sake..."

Her back was to him, so he couldn't see how her face fell, but he could see her shoulders shake, her head lowering. He couldn't see the expression of shock that quickly turned to relief and then sorrow.

"Haibara?"

"Don't make this any harder than it has to be," she told him, her voice shaking. "I'd rather think you hated me...then this wouldn't hurt so much..."

He couldn't know what she meant, either. Not just administering the dose of "medicine" that could kill him, but the dose that could _cure_ him--and send send him out of her reach, out of her life, forever.

Conan blinked, then glanced down. With what could happen, he didn't want things to stay sour between them. "Look, I said some things before...and even if this situation is shot to hell I know you were trying to help us. What I said then...God, I was so angry...I was completely out of my head. I've had time to calm down...and I've been thinking about things, figuring out what this is about..." He turned his gaze up again, but she would not turn around and look at him. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry I went off at you before. I might have every right to be angry, but you didn't deserve to have my panic and exhaustion thrown at you like that."

She shook her head. "Never mind that...never mind...you were right..."

"Am I forgiven?" he asked, wearing a shadow of his old grin.

"Baka," she retorted, wiping briefly at her eyes--though she still had not turned to look at him. "There's nothing to forgive. I'm the one who started this. And now I'm going to finish it..."

He nearly jumped a bit when she suddenly whirled at him. Her eyes were slightly red but she had put on her mask again, stern and brisk. "Are you ready?" she asked bluntly.

"I don't think I'll ever be _ready_ for that stuff, but...yeah, let's do it." He let out a deep breath. "Now or never."

Ai nodded, fetching the last implements from her desk--a solution storage bottle and a glass syringe. Moving briskly, she secured a thin needle to the syringe and began to draw out a precise amount of the translucent, slightly reddish liquid in the tiny jar.

"Injectable, huh?" Conan laughed shortly, attempting to make light of his situation. "That's a change. And I always hated those trips to the doctor that required shots."

"I didn't have time to render it into a pill," Ai replied, concentrating on the syringe. "And there are some living substances in this solution that wouldn't react well to that process. This is simply the quickest, safest way to ensure success."

"Whatever works," Conan shrugged. "As long as it _works_..."

"I did the best I could," she admitted quietly, facing him at last with the loaded syringe. "But I still can't be completely sure. This substance is a combination of a carrier fluid, apotoxin trigger, and retrovirus. If it works the way I hope it will...your cells will pick up the codes from Yuuichi's DNA that allow him to filter the toxin. Since they're similar to your own genetic code--obviously, by your relation--there shouldn't be a problem."

"So you're pretty much hoping my body will take the hint from Yuu-kun's on how to get rid of the apotoxin?" Conan cocked an eyebrow.

She nodded. "I hypothesized it would work, based on the genetic readouts I got from Yuuichi-kun--and from him, I could make an educated guess on yours. Both of you--your genes are hardy and adaptive...more so than most normal people...but if it doesn't work and you can't adapt to this, then..."

Conan swallowed, but met her eyes. "I'm still willing to risk it. I have faith in you...and I'm pretty sure I can trust Yuu-kun's cells to help me out," he added with a brief snort of a chuckle.

She smiled in reply--a sad, hollow smile, but a smile nonetheless. Approaching with the needle and a tourniquet, she took a deep breath to focus herself. "Left arm," she requested succinctly.

He complied wordlessly, setting his left forearm on the chair arm to allow her access. Ai secured the tourniquet, then quickly swabbed an area with alcohol.

"This will be going directly into your bloodstream," she informed him quietly, trying to keep any shaking out of her voice. "It might cause some dizziness."

He only nodded, taking a deep steadying breath himself, watching her position the needle. "Oi," he nudged, with a shade of his old fatalistic humor, "if your hands keep shaking you might miss. Then I might only grow up on one side or something."

She couldn't help her tiny chuckle of laughter, shaking her head. It didn't do much to steady her hands, but it gave her focus as she repositioned her hands, took a deep breath, and slid the needle in.

* * *

Ran was rather surprised at the sudden hubbub when Akai came marching smartly out of Haibara-chan's office and ordered his men to begin preparing for the move. Instantly, all the soldiers in the room were on their feet and moving--packing everything that needed to be packed, securing important equipment, and tossing their bedding and belongings into duffels and carrysacks.

She sat on her cot, clutching a large-eyed and perplexed Yuuichi close, silent tears drifting down her cheeks as she hoped for Shinichi to come walking out that door across the room--tall, as he once had been, with a man's strides that would eat up the distance between them, long arms that would wrap her in warmth, and deepened voice to tell her that he was coming home for good.

Hell, who was she kidding? She'd be overjoyed to see _Conan-kun_ coming out that door, if only it meant he was still alive.

"Mouri-san?" came the shy voice of Daisuke from beside her, making her jump a little as she was pulled from her inward thoughts.

"Ah...hai?"

"I-I'm really sorry," he told her. "I mean, I know you're...waiting, but...the boss says it's time to move. Is there anything you need while we're getting ready? Uh...we don't have any carseats for the little guy, but..."

Ran gave the poor young man an understanding smile. "Thanks for the thought," she said, trying to sound grateful through the tears she couldn't stop. "I think I'll just need Yuu-chan's coat--I left it...over there..."

There, on the floor, where it had fallen when she'd arrived to find her son safe and alive...where Conan-kun, Shinichi, had come following her trail to find them both...

"I'll get that for you," Daisuke offered, glad to be doing something to help, scuttling off to fetch the small garment.

Ran watched him go, then turned her eyes back to the door. _Shinichi...please be okay..._

"Kaachan?" Yuuichi queried softly. "Are we goin' home soon?"

"Soon, Yuu-chan," she replied, just as softly. She wished she had something more reassuring to say to her little boy, but there was nothing reassuring about encroaching death. "I don't know if we're going home...but I know we're going soon..."

* * *

The prick of the needle didn't even sting; she was more skilled than that.

At first, Ai drew blood in, letting opaque and transparent red fluids mix, before gently pushing the plunger down. Her fingers moved in a patient, gentle rhythm of draw back, push down, draw back, push down--never forcing the liquid, never letting it out in too high of a concentration.

They were both silent, both watching the potentially deadly syringe. Gradually, in uncounted seconds, the syringe was empty, and the needle was drawn back.

Ai hurriedly set the syringe aside and removed the torniquet, turning away to replace the items on her desk. She felt the same as she had when dealing with Yuuichi--giving him the apotoxin and praying that he would not die.

As she was praying now.

"Well," Conan announced, with another shaky breath. "So far so good. I didn't keel right over--that's got to be a good sign."

Ai checked the wall clock. "Five minutes," she stated. "We'll wait five minutes at least. Even Yuuichi-kun showed no reaction at first."

Conan _had_ felt a warm, slightly tingly sensation slide through his veins as the solution was being administered, but that had faded even as the last milliliter of fluid disappeared through the needle. "No dizziness--yet," he reported at the end of a minute and a half. He caught himself looking over his hands and arms as if expecting something to happen--good or bad--and forced his eyes back up to the clock.

"Three minutes," Ai announced, still alternating between the clock and Conan. "You don't look flushed...do you feel anything?"

He shook his head, fighting off disappointment. "Not a thing. I don't get it--even with your old cure _something_ would have changed by now. I'd have started getting feverish already."

"We're in uncharted territory with this," she replied absently, watching the second hand. "It may be nothing...it may be everything."

After many more far-too-long seconds, Conan let out a long breath, half of relief and half of frustration. "Five minutes. Nothing."

Ai let out a sigh of her own, but it was a much happier reason. "No reaction," she stated, almost unable to disguise her gladness.

Conan, on the other hand, was fighting off a crushing sense of disappointment. "_Nothing_. Dammit. After all this, _nothing!_" He slid out of the chair and all but stomped toward the door.

"Would you rather be dead?" Ai demanded, stopping him in his tracks.

"I'd rather be _cured_," he asserted, glancing over his shoulder with a look of almost petulant frustration.

"This isn't the end, Kudo-kun," she said, rising from her own chair. "We can try again. Later, when we're safe, we'll have time to try again..."

He relaxed a little, shoulders slumping. "Yeah...I guess so. And have to go through all this again, too--wondering if I'm going to die..."

"Kudo-kun..." She could see he was hurting again--not from the chemicals she'd injected, but from the bitter defeat he had once again suffered. She had seen the hope in his eyes at the mention of the possibility of a cure, and she had seen that hope dashed like brittle glass at his feet with yet another failure on her part. "I'm sorry..."

He glanced back at her again, his eyes gentler this time. "Hey, don't do that. You tried. And besides, I make a good guinea pig--when it works for me, we'll get you set up and then--"

"It won't work for me."

Conan blinked, quickly turning to face her completely. "_What?_ What do you mean it won't work for you? It's the cure, isn't it?"

"It's the cure for _you_, Kudo-kun," she replied softly, offering the faintest of smiles. "Yuuichi-kun is _your_ son. The whole treatment hinges on the fact that your DNA is compatible, plus that you and Yuuichi-kun are...special, genetically. It would never work for me; in fact, I'd say that _your_ cure _would_ kill me--one hundred percent chance of death. And even if I were to try to create a cure for myself--and that's _if_ my offspring posessed the same survivability as you and Yuuichi-kun, which I highly doubt--by the time I can bear a child of my own...well, the point does become rather moot, doesn't it?"

"Haibara..."

She shrugged. "I don't mind, though. I've...grown accustomed to this. Resigned myself to it. For a long time, I've seen this change as...a way of leaving my old life behind. With my family gone and only sorrow behind me, I have nothing tying me to Miyano Shiho."

He stood there for long moments, staring at her, trying to find something to say.

But she wanted none of that. "Go on," she ordered, her face a businesslike mask again. "Get out of here. Go tell Mouri-chan you're still alive, before she comes looking for you. I'd rather she not karate my door to splinters."

"Yeah..." Conan swallowed once. "Thanks, Haibara."

Then he was gone, and she was alone in the silence of her lab once more--wondering if she'd wished too hard that it wouldn't work...

* * *

"Ran!"

The sound of his voice brought her straight upright, nearly spilling Yuuichi onto the floor. She wasn't even able to distinguish between the voice of the boy she knew and the man he wanted to be--all she cared about was that it was _him_, and that he had returned to her.

"Shinichi--!" Leaving Yuuichi at the cot, she darted through the milling, hurrying soldiers--barely registering Akai at the corner of her eye, heading for the door Conan had just vacated. But that wasn't important right now--grabbing Conan up in a ferocious hug _was_. "You're alright...!"

"Ack!" Swept bodily off his feet by her embrace, Conan managed not to blush too badly--he returned the awkward hug and tried not to feel so embarrassed. "I'm fine, Ran--really. Uh, you can put me down now..."

"Sorry, sorry..." She was laughing and crying all at once, again, overjoyed to find him alive and whole. "I'm just so glad you're okay..."

Feet once more on the floor, he shrugged, still fighting off the bitter black disillusionment that threatened to swamp him--promising to return him to the broken-souled life he'd lived before today. "It didn't work," he confessed, looking down, his voice barely audible over the melee around them. "It didn't do anything. I'm sorry, Ran...I wanted to--"

"_You're_ sorry?" she asked incredulously. "What for?"

He met her eyes, and his own were dark pools of regret. "I wanted to be _me_...for you, so..."

"Oh...you silly..." She bent low, to his eye level, to fix his gaze nose to nose with her tearful one. "You _are_ you. Baka! I don't care how you look, or how tall you are. As long as you're _here_...as long as you're alive..."

The faint accusation in her gaze stung him. "I know...and I'm sorry I made you worry, but..."

Ran took a deep breath, rising to her full height again. "But we can worry about that later, right? We just have to survive tonight."

"Yeah..." Disappointment was still a sour taste on his tongue, but he couldn't allow himself to dwell on it. No matter that he was still trapped in the body of a child--no matter that the whole world still knew him as Edogawa Conan--he would still see to it that Ran and Yuuichi were safe. They would survive tonight, even if he didn't...

"Daisuke-kun told me they're loading everything into the vans," Ran told him, wiping at her eyes. "And then the team will split up to take alternate routes to their next safe place."

"Sounds like a plan," Conan sighed, feeling quite tired. It was much warmer out here in the main room, with all the bodies and activity. "How's Yuu-kun holding up?"

"He's okay," Ran replied, watching the little boy sitting on the cot by the wall. "He understands we'll have to go quickly and quietly. He knows there's danger. He's always been very intelligent that way...like you..." She smiled, trying to stay positive, but a fresh pair of tears appeared in her eyes. "But he's scared..."

Conan took a breath, wiping at a trickle of nervous sweat at his temple. "We'll be okay," he promised. "We'll all be okay."

She took his hand, and together they walked back to stay with the wide-eyed little boy on the cot, becoming an island in the sea of people moving to and fro. Ran sat beside her son, comforting him in a warm embrace.

"Did the medicine work?" was Yuuichi's first question, as Conan stopped wearily before him.

"No, not really," the older boy replied honestly. "Looks like Haibara still has some bugs to work out."

Yuuichi's face fell. "But she _said_ it would work," he insisted, childishly stubborn. "You don't feel better?"

Conan's mouth twitched. "It wasn't like I had the flu or something..." he chuckled tiredly, ruffling the little boy's hair. "I didn't _feel_ sick before, Yuu-kun. I still don't. The medicine wasn't for feeling better..." He glanced at Ran. "Well, maybe for feeling better about myself..."

But even as he glanced at her, he blinked at the worry in her eyes. He turned his head to face her fully--and nearly tipped over.

"Shinichi?" Ran asked, reaching out an arm to steady him. "Are you okay? You look...really pale and flushed..."

"I'm fine...I-I just..." He realized he was swaying--or was it the _room_ that was swaying? "I'm...kinda dizzy..." he admitted.

Ran jumped to his side and held him up, stopping him from toppling to the floor. "Oh God, you're burning up...!" she hissed, testing his forehead. "Are you...?"

"Suh...something's...wrong..." he said hoarsely, his legs trembling beneath him.

Then his phone rang loudly in his pocket. Startled, he drew it out with shaky hands, unintentionally leaning on Ran for support. He managed to get the phone to his ear and inquired unsteadily, "Who is it?"

"You're out of time," bit out a terse, familiar voice. "They're here. You've got to move."

"Kuroba?" he choked. "What--?"

"No time, Kudo! Get the hell out of there, _now!_"

The line went dead.

* * *

Hattori Heiji was very, very _bored_.

Initially, he had signed on for this little adventure expecting a rescue mission--but had thus far done a lot of _waiting_. A whole lot of sitting on his ass--which he did not like doing when there were enemies afoot; it rubbed the swordsman in him the wrong way. He wanted to be out and about, moving--attacking, rather than waiting to be attacked.

_Dammit, Kudo, I ain't your personal chauffer!_ he thought irately, tapping his fingers on his biceps as he waited impatiently, leaning against the motorcycle. _Something had better happen soon, or I'm gonna go in there myself and read that little shrimp the riot act for makin' me wait out here like a cab driver..._

He yawned, and proceeded to stretch enormously, arms high above his head. That done, he rose from his motorcycle to commence another period of restless pacing.

Just as he moved, a bullet _pinged_ loudly off the brick wall, right where his head had been.

"_K'so!_" he yelped, ducking away from the loud ricochet and diving for cover behind his bike, eyes already searching for his attacker. "What the--?"

Another pair of bullets tried to find him, one hitting the wall above, the other sparking off the motorcycle's metal frame. _What the hell--**snipers?** Shit, it's **them!** Screw it, Kudo, I ain't waitin' around any more!_

Keeping low, he waited for the next couple of shots--then leaped for the seat of the motorcycle, kicked the engine to life, and roared out of the alley.

* * *

Conan's knees went out from under him as cold fear robbed what was left of his strength. Through the roaring in his ears, he could just hear Ran calling out to him, and Yuuichi's shrill voice nearby, frightened--but they almost sounded like they were underwater, and the whole room spun around him.

"Akai..." He tried to speak, tried to stand, fighting Ran's hands. "Quick...tell Akai...got to warn him...!"

Ran resisted his efforts, puzzled. "Shinichi--what are you...?"

"Let go--we gotta go--they're coming--!" He looked up at her, forcing himself to focus on her face. "You have to tell him--tell him they're here!"

Pale-faced with shock but quickly understanding, Ran nodded and left his side. "Akai! Akai! Haibara-chan!"

At the same time she went in search of the leaders of the little troop, Yakamoto jerked upright in his chair. "Alarm--!"

An explosion rocked through the building before he could finish--something far too nearby, the rumble drowning him out. For that instant, everyone was still--sharp-eyed soldiers and wide-eyed children alike, awe and dread rendering all of them silent.

Then Yakamoto was on his feet, throwing down his radio headphones and unclipping his sidearm, bellowing aloud at the men around him. "Code Black! Code Black! Evacuate! _Move!_"

Controlled chaos erupted again, accented by loud voices. Hurrying feet flowed around the boy crouched on the floor looking dizzy and ill--around the smaller boy who stood with him, trying to be brave.

"Niichan...?" Yuuichi quavered, somehow audible to him over the din.

"It'll be okay," Conan promised breathlessly, taking the child's hand and holding it tight. "Don't be scared, Yuu-kun...it'll be okay."

A second explosion, closer than the first, made the lights flicker and dim.

Akai burst out of Ai's office, nearly colliding with Ran--and interrupting her before she could even begin to explain anything. "I know, Mouri-san, I know! Move quickly--get your son and get ready. We'll go down the chute."

Ran blinked. "Chute--?"

"Move!" Grasping her roughly by the shoulder, he turned her bodily about and gave her a push back in the direction she'd come. Then he hurried to bark orders at the others. "Code Black, now get a move on! Eiji, dump and wipe! Yakamoto, pull the plug! Hiroshi--get Keisuke out of here, and do a head count on the other end! Ishita, take four and make sure they don't come in through those doors!"

"Aye sir!"

"Wh-what about the others?" Daisuke demanded, all but dancing in one place. "What about the guys on perimeter? Aren't you going to recall--?"

Akai fixed him with a glare, silencing him--and in that silence, they could hear the gunfire. "They're already dead. You--you've got Mouri-san, got it? Make sure she gets clear."

"Yessir!" Gulping, the young man snapped off a salute, training taking over despite his nerves. He darted off after Ran, already drawing his weapon.

"This is gonna be tight," stated another steady voice--Mamoru, who remained calm despite the situation. "They got here a lot sooner than we--"

"I know that, dammit," Akai bit out. "Nothing we can do about it now. Look...I want you on the kid."

Mamoru nodded. "Got it. I'll see to him. What about--?"

"I'll take Kudo myself."

"Right." Mamoru nodded again, sharply, then gave his commander a grin. "Catch you on the flip side, boss."

Without another word, the two separated, moving at a fast clip.

At the back of the room, not far from the lab wall, was a small door built into the plaster--which looked for all the world like a laundry chute. And perhaps it was; men and supplies were being bundled into the opening like dirty laundry, disappearing down the dark metal tube to parts unknown.

Ran was staying at Conan's side, trying to hold on to him and to Yuuichi at the same time. Conan was doing his best to stay on his feet, and the child who clung to Ran's leg was huge-eyed with fear.

"We've got to go, Mouri-san," Daisuke insisted, with Mamoru alongside him. "We'll make sure you all get out of here--but we've got to go now!"

"The chute will take us out to the warehouse below," Mamoru explained, a little less frantic. "It's not in the floor plan, so they won't know about it--they'll be expecting us to take the stairs."

Conan was anxious, frustrated with the growing sickness that plagued him, making him unable to act quickly in this emergency. And he was worried--he hadn't seen a sign of Haibara since before the fracas had begun, and the little "secret base" was rapidly emptying of bodies. "Wait...wait..." he demanded breathlessly, fighting to keep his feet. "Where...after the chute, where do we...?"

"There'll be cars waiting," Akai stated tersely. "We'll be able to go quickly once we reach the warehouse entrance. Now move!"

"Mouri-san, you're with Daisuke--he's your bodyguard," Mamoru said. "Stick with him like glue, got it?"

Ran nodded rapidly, but protested. "What about--?"

"I'll take care of your son, ma'am," Mamoru assured her with a smile. "I promise. I'll die before I let anything happen to him."

She let out a breath of relief. "Thank you."

"And I'll take care of _this_ 'kid,'" Akai informed them, grasping Conan's upper arm and removing his weight from Ran's hands. The boy gasped as the sudden motion made his head pound and his feverish skin ache, but offered no protest.

"Go with them, Ran," Conan rasped, his breath coming in hard pants. "They can protect you...a lot better than me..."

"But Shinichi, you're sick--you need--"

"_Go!_" he cried, unable to fight both pain and emotion at the same time. "I'll be fine--you take care of Yuu-kun--!"

And then Mamoru and Daisuke were pulling Ran away, escorting her to the chute opening and helping her in. She was still pale, but there was determination in her eyes as they flashed back toward him, and that was enough to set Conan's mind at ease; she was strong, and she could see this through.

Daisuke followed Ran, and Mamoru reached for Yuuichi--who was clinging tight to Conan's hand, trembling faintly, confused but uncrying.

"Niichan...?" he quavered, large-eyed.

Conan concentrated, allowing himself to lean on Akai to gather strength. "Go with Mamoru-san...okay? Do what he says...he'll take you to Ran..."

Slowly, reluctantly, the little boy released his hand--after one parting squeeze--and stepped back, turning toward Mamoru.

"I'll take care of him," Mamoru assured him--then he was gone, wrapping Yuuichi up in his arms and taking the child down the chute in his lap.

"Just you and me, Kudo," Akai said, still holding on to the flagging boy's arm. "Can you make it down on your own, or do you need to ride in my lap?"

Despite the heat throbbing in his bones, Conan snarled. "I'm fine!" He jerked his arm free, teetered, but held firm. "Those men--downstairs--"

Akai's dark eyes fixed on him. "Shitty decisions, Kudo. They knew when I sent them down there they weren't coming back up. They're there to hold off the enemy."

Conan gaped, but Akai shoved him toward the chute, all but tossing him into it. With a yelp, he fell into metallic blackness.

The chute did not lead straight down; rather, it descended at a steep but definite incline, vertical enough to make it a rapid form of transit, just gentle enough to be safe. The darkness and the speed and the tumbling descent only made his head throb even worse--and then he abruptly exploded out into light and open air at the bottom, spilling into a hard pile of some kind of rough cloth that acted as a cushion.

Hands grabbed at him, dragging him upright, away from his landing spot. He struggled to focus his eyes, to hear the voices over the thundering in his ears; his surroundings spun around him horribly enough to make him nauseous, exacerbating his feverish tremblings.

"Holy shit, he's burning up--" he heard, an unfamiliar voice.

"Ran...where's Ran...?" he demanded, but his words came as hardly more than breaths of air. The hands pulled him along, their touch alone hurting him--searing his feverish skin and causing his aching muscles to cramp.

"Where's Haibara-kun? She needs to take a look--"

"--gone with Mouri-san, headed for the cars--"

"--if he dies Akai's gonna--"

"Let go," he gasped, trying to stop the spinning room. "Let me go!"

"--get back, watch it, give him some space!"

The hands released him, gently, letting him sag against...something, rough wood. The surface felt like it was tilting, and he couldn't even tell if it was the wall or the floor. His legs were giving out; the floor was probably _down there_ even though it felt like the ceiling just now, and he was falling toward it...

He just managed to catch himself on his hands, but that was all; too weak to stop it, he threw up the remainder of his previous meal as another wave of hot irons throbbed into his bones.

"That had better just be nerves, Kudo."

Akai's sharp voice cut into the haze that surrounded him, making him grit his teeth against the humiliation as well as the pain. Anger crystallized, giving him a focus; using that, he pushed back, regaining ground he'd lost to the hot pain and sickness, forcing himself to sit upright and glare blearily at the man.

"Piss off..." he grated, wiping his mouth with a shaking arm.

Akai actually cocked an eyebrow. "Well. At least you're still fighting. Alright, Kudo, let's go. My men are already moving your family toward the cars. We should have a good five minutes on the enemy."

"I'll...get there..." God, this was a thousand times worse than any pill--sure, the damn things _hurt_, but it was over quick. _This_...

Impatient, Akai reached for him, grabbing him by the arm to haul him up again. The unexpected touch rattled through his muscles like firecrackers, making him give a sharp cry.

It was enough to startle the dark-haired man into releasing him. Akai stared at him for one unguarded moment--then scowled, irritated once more. "How bad is it?" he demanded. "And why didn't you say something earlier?"

"Came on a little quick..." Conan husked wryly in reply. "...and we've been...kinda busy..."

"It's the serum, isn't it?" Akai said lowly. It was not really a question.

Conan would have shrugged, but then that would have hurt too much. "Yeah. I'm either dying..." He fought down another wave of hot, dizzy nausea. "...or I'm gonna start..._wishing_ I was dead..."

"Can you walk?"

The not-boy gazed at him with eyes that retained their fire, despite all the fever and pain. "Help me up..." He took a deep breath, swallowing his pride. "I'll make it...I have to...she's waiting for me..."

Akai reached out and, more gently this time--though he would admit that to no one--assisted Conan to his unsteady feet. The four men around them took up positions as they began their far-too-slow trek across the crowded storage warehouse.

* * *

Ran was worried--frightened, even--but Daisuke and the men around her assured her that Yuuichi was coming right behind her; that it was best not to move them in a single group so that they would not present an easy target...that she should not be afraid, even though she could hear guns firing not so very far away...

_Where are the police?_ she wondered, stumbling along with Daisuke guiding her by the elbow. _Surely someone heard the explosions...didn't they? Isn't anyone going to come?_

"How much further?" she whispered breathlessly.

"The second door is at the south end of the warehouse," the young man at her side responded. "Our vehicles are hidden there. Don't worry, Mouri-san, we'll be out of here in no time."

She nodded, more to reassure _him_ that his reassuring smile was effective; really, the poor man--barely older than herself--was on eggshells, torn between jittery nerves and sworn duty. He had promised to protect her with his life, but neither was he anxious to die.

Behind them, there was a tumultous crash, and the brief, staccato bursts of gunfire got louder. Daisuke tensed beside her, his mouth settling into a line. "Breach," he said softly, and the others with him nodded and thumbed their safeties off.

Ran got the feeling things had just gotten worse. The urge to go back and take Yuuichi up in her arms was almost unbearable.

The other three men around her were just as wary, moving quickly and confidently with their weapons at the ready. Ran had never much been comfortable around guns, but right now she found their presence to be just as solidly reassuring as the competent, experienced soldiers around her. She was safe with them, as they'd promised, and just behind them Yuuichi had another escort just like this one.

Ahead, there were only more dusty stacks of crates--old machine parts, metal frames covered in canvas, stacked piles of forklift pallets. It was a veritable maze--but she had an inkling that this little private army had left it that way for a reason.

She didn't even know what triggered the sudden shout from one of the men behind her. But she was tackled to the ground amidst a sudden flurry of motion--and the distinctive _pwangs_ of bullets ricocheting off of concrete. Suddenly the gunfire was horribly, shockingly _loud_--it was coming from all around her, from the men sworn to protect her, firing back at the attacking enemy.

Daisuke and one other grabbed her by the arms and hurried her behind the nearest solid cover, while the rest covered their escape. She heard a man scream, one of theirs, and gave a single short, sorrowful cry of her own, crouched there behind a meager shelter with Daisuke beside her.

The young soldier was shouting into his headset radio. "Yakamoto! Yakamoto! We're pinned down!" He clicked off, swore, and then glanced at her. "God, I'm sorry Mouri-san...I don't know how they got in here so quickly..."

"Can we make it?" the second soldier shouted over the sporadic gunfire.

Daisuke looked bleak. "Not sure."

"Yuuichi!" Ran nearly shrieked--and would have stood, if Daisuke had not stopped her. "Yuuichi's out there--he's--"

"It's okay! Mouri-san--" Daisuke struggled against her briefly, forcing her attention. "Mouri-san, they won't bring him this way! He'll be safer if you stay here--don't lead them to him!"

White as a sheet, she nodded.

"I'll get you out of this, Mouri-san..." Daisuke reloaded his weapon and rose to a crouch. "Just hang on--I'll make sure you get back to your little boy."

And Ran could only wait, bleeding in her heart, as gunfire echoed all around her.

_--to be continued--_


End file.
